109 Social justice poems

Last time I saw myself die is when police killed Jessie Hernandez A 17 year old brown queer // who was sleeping in their car Yesterday I saw myself die again // Fifty times I died in Orlando // & I remember reading // Dr. José Esteban Muñoz before he passed I was studying at NYU // where he was teaching // where he wrote shit That made me feel like a queer brown survival was possible // But he didn’t Survive & now // on the dancefloor // in the restroom // on the news // in my chest There are another fifty bodies that look like mine // & are Dead // & I’ve been marching for Black Lives & talking about police brutality Against Native communities too // for years now // but this morning I feel it // I really feel it again // How can we imagine ourselves // We being black native Today // Brown people // How can we imagine ourselves When All the Dead Boys Look Like Us? // Once I asked my nephew where he wanted To go to College // What career he would like // as if The whole world was his for the choosing // Once he answered me without fearing Tombstones or cages or the hands from a father // The hands of my lover Yesterday praised my whole body // Made angels from my lips // Ave Maria Full of Grace // He propped me up like the roof of a cathedral // in NYC Before we opened the news & read // & read about people who think two brown queers Can’t build cathedrals // only cemeteries // & each time we kiss A funeral plot opens // In the bedroom I accept his kiss // & I lose my reflection I’m tired of writing this poem // but I want to say one last word about Yesterday // my father called // I heard him cry for only the second time in my life He sounded like he loved me // it’s something I’m rarely able to hear & I hope // if anything // his sound is what my body remembers first.

for all the dead & hear my streets with ragged beats & the beats are too beat to live so the graves push out with hands that cannot touch the makers of light & the sun flames down through the roofs & the roots that slide to one side & the whistlin' fires of the cops & the cops in the shops do what they gotta do & your body's on the fence & your ID's in the air & the shots get fired & the gas in the face & the tanks on your blood & the innocence all around & the spillin' & the grillin' & the grinnin' & the game of Race no one wanted & the same every day so U fire & eat the smoke thru your long bones & the short mace & the day? This last sweet Swisher day that turns to love & no one knows how it came or what it is or what it says or what it was or what for or from what gate is it open is it locked can U pull it back to your life filled with bitter juice & demon angel eyes even though you pray & pray mama says you gotta sing she says you got wings but from what skies from where could they rise what are the things the no-things called love how can its power be fixed or grasped so the beats keep on blowin' keep on flyin' & the moon tracks your bed where you are alone or maybe dead & the truth carves you carves you & calls you back still alive cry cry the candles by the last four trees still soaked in Michael Brown red and Officer Liu red and Officer Ramos red and Eric Garner whose last words were not words they were just breath askin' for breath they were just burnin’ like me like we are all still burnin' can you hear me can you can you feel me swaggin' tall & driving low & talkin' fine & hollerin' from my corner crime & fryin’ against the wall almost livin' almost dyin' almost livin' almost dyin'

Model prisoner or not, I won't. Silver lash, hound's tooth, meager sinful town's crook. I am nervous again. I could kill if you let me. But tonight, I'll be still under this palm. Zeroed out, the tea my toilet muck. Licorice and almond twisted beneath the sink, I'm lovely again. Come on with my dying. Today the globe's underside isn't pink, but rather, I look ahead toward what has happened.

In his life he neither wrote nor read. In his life he didn’t cut down a single tree, didn’t slit the throat of a single calf. In his life he did not speak of the New York Times behind its back, didn’t raise his voice to a soul except in his saying: “Come in, please, by God, you can’t refuse.” — Nevertheless— his case is hopeless, his situation desperate. His God-given rights are a grain of salt tossed into the sea. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury: about his enemies my client knows not a thing. And I can assure you, were he to encounter the entire crew of the aircraft carrier Enterprise, he’d serve them eggs sunny-side up, and labneh fresh from the bag.

accumulation of land              maintain household bear      labor of house child cooking reserve line               belonging to                        elaborate isolation familias implements               enemies captured in war      bearing child rearing production heirs number         and rear household             family contains counting herds possessions     fellow feeling crude             isolate care family contains in germ          bearing rearing                   accumulation of land implements of production       cooking reserve line of        the number belonging counting possessions              heirs                                  the captured isolated                                 household bear                  rear heirs feeling crude                         belonging to                       fellow feeling crude

Progress looks slow because it is slow and also because the people who benefit from nothing changing have more resources than we do we're still gaining i want to be honest about slow and still here

They keep saying a seat at the table but i'm not interested in the table as it currently exists the table was built to keep us out maybe we need a different table maybe we need to talk about who gets to design it

I owe something to the people who couldn't say what they needed to say who were not allowed who said it anyway at great cost i owe them noise i owe them this poem

My grandmother stood in line for hours to vote for the first time at age 52 the year was 1965 i vote for her i vote loud i vote like it costs me something because it did