WHAT DOES BLACK TASTE LIKE
the cops walk free
while walls
hold precedence
over an innocent black
woman’s life.
but i still have
a job to go to
so i have to be fine.
the streets molasse
thick with bodies//
some cities
forget what black
tastes like.
we cant scream
forever//i do
the revolution
in my throat
is louder
than the hole
in King’s//Till’s
Hampton’s//Taylor’s
head/stomach/throat
dignity//humanity
doesn’t mean shit
if you’re black
terrified in your room
with family
friends
or a television.
how many of us
are sick in these chains?
but, we still have
to keep living
(a necessity of
endangered thugs//
hoodlums//super
predators//niggers//)
so we look for more
convenient times to mourn.
today my customers are all
smiling pearly white
making small talk
about tomorrow
and hope and the fbi’s
fresh investigation
and bob dylan’s protest
songs and humanity
humanity all of us humanity
human rights and a lot of other
words that are supposed
to sound comforting to my ears.
the cops walk free
and this country
is a tomb for my want.
it chews me and spits me out,
who wants to know
what black tastes like?
is it the wet salt of my brow
or the decaying stomach
burped up with every
tweet about the last
four hundred years
(give or take
depending on
what critical theory
of race you want to
white wash)
or is it the bitter names
of, oh hell, I could pick
a new one for next week
(or any from the last,
you get my drift, right)
a cop walks free
and we ask
how much does freedom
weigh? do you measure
it with pounds of flesh
or is it light
as air forced from
crushed tracheas
and collapsed lungs?
there aren’t beautiful
things to say right now
because cops
walk free.
what is the taste
of black
can it be
scraped from
a dead tongue?
none of us
have breathed
in a minute
if ever.
three cops walk
because my skin
is America’s shame—
we were born
with a death shroud
stitched to our bodies
and we still
go to work
because we’re fine
we’re fine fine fine
fine fine fine fine
fine.
it’s not the streets
swelling
and we’re not sinking
from steel chains
and we’re not drowning
we’re fine.
three cops walk free;
the surviving wall
was probably painted white,
an indifferent cream at least.
three cops walk free
and we all lie buried still.
—from Rattle #75, Spring 2022
__________
e.a. toles: “The first time I read Emily Dickenson, I realized that there were other worlds in poems. Each line was a mystery building on top of what had come before. I lost myself in that collection of poems. The veil had been pulled back, exposing the subtle ache of humanity. I wanted to live in that aching feeling forever. So I started writing poetry.” (web)
