I go to the railroad tracks
And follow them to the station of my enemies
A cobalt-toothed man pitches pennies
at my mugshot negative
All over the united states, there are
Toddlers in the rock
I see why everyone out here
got in the big cosmic basket
And why blood agreements mean a lot
And why I get shot back at
I understand the psycho-spiritual refusal
to write white history or take the glass freeway
White skin tattooed on my right forearm
Ricochet sewage near where I collapsed
into a rat-infested manhood
My new existence as living graffiti
In the kitchen with
a lot of gun cylinders to hack up
House of God in part
No cops in part
My body brings down the Christmas
The new bullets pray over blankets made from old bullets
Pray over the 28th hour’s next beauty mark
Extrajudicial confederate statue restoration
the waist band before the next protest poster
By the way,
Time is not an illusion, your honor
I will save your desk for last
You are witty, your honor
You’re moving money again, your honor
It is only raining one thing: non-white cops
And prison guard shadows
Reminding me of
Spoiled milk floating on an oil spill
A neighborhood making a lot of fuss over its demise
A new lake for a Black Panther Party
Malcom X’s ballroom jacket slung over my son’s shoulders
The figment of village
a noon noose to a new white preacher
-All in an abstract painting of a president
Bought slavers some time, didn’t it?
The tantric screeches of military bolts and Election-Tuesday cars
A cold-blooded study in leg irons
Proof that some white people have actually fondled nooses
That sundown couples
made their vows of love over
opaque peach plastic
and bolt action audiences
Man, the Medgar Evers-second is definitely my favorite law of science
Fondled news clippings and primitive Methodists
My arm changes imperialisms
Simple policing vs. Structural frenzies
Elementary school script vs. Even whiter white spectrums
Artless bleeding and
the challenge of watching civilians think
“terrible rituals they have around the corner.
They let their elders beg for public mercy”
“I am going to go ahead and sharpen these kids’ heads
into arrows myself and see
how much gravy spills out of family crests.”
Modern fans of war
What with their t-shirt poems
And t-shirt guilt
And me, having on the cheapest pair of shoes on the bus,
I have no choice but to read the city walls for signs of my life
Copyright © 2020 by Tongo Eisen-Martin. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 31, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.