african american family

Good evening everyone and welcome to a very special Friday Night Poetry Corner. We nearing the end of Juneteeth and to cap this off I am featuring this magnificent poem called “The Bloom of Disquiet” by the gifted Dionne Charlet. Please when you get a chance visit her page. You won’t be disappointed!

Spangling the Verse

Research on Juneteenth,
and I am born
to disquiet by lynchings
from my shelter of privilege,
to find history leveled
under voices once muted,
now megaphoned
from Minneapolis to Berlin.

I am disquieted
by a father’s breaths,
taken under knee
and divisible
by the wrong room
where Breonna was shot.

Disquiet reboots
the me that I was.

I have chosen to be

a speaker in tongues
for free verse
aloud with alarm
when lynchings
are deemed suicides.

No more.

I will resonate

with the pleading
of a father’s breaths,
taken under knee
and divisible
by the wrong room
where Breonna was shot.

No more.

I will resonate

with the thunder
that peals from white pages
when a jogger
is run down
and the sheriff knows.

No more.

I will resonate