portrait of rage with caution tape & bullhorns
Erica Garner Will Not Stop Marching — ABC News
No matter who we lost, the cab drivers are stiff
in anti-protest. the corrupt streets, like
jails, are in season & exasperated tax dollars do
their thing
our fathers fight to breathe while
we fight the police air, the police rain, the commissioners
the handcuffed ground they died on,
we lie on. We are arrested
in grief & in rage. We fear
we are a national crisis
If our lives mattered, you would vote
us safe. If our lives mattered, you would die
in the name of my father’s lungs. If our vote mattered,
we wouldn’t
choose presidents, we’d play outside
& not be afraid. The neighborhoods are
overrun by public interests
& what do you want? My father prayed eleven times
& still
ain’t here
I’d rather be angry, no matter what
it doesn’t solve
I’d rather be forgotten than promise you justice
or the end of my mourning
instead imagine a world where my name is my name
& a video is enough evidence
Our men are killed or our daddies are jailed
our mothers ruin our friends into blood
I, too, am killed
stunned or stoned by a million faulted trials
I, too, cannot breathe cannotbreathecannotbreathecannotbreathecannotbreathecannotbreate
cannotbreathecannotbreathecannotbreathecannotbreathecannotbreate
He was my father but is no more
& now everything i have is a bullhorn is a father
now the pavement will father me Or my
father’s
breath will island its way into a mouth, will teach me
how to father myself into
death
in honor of my daughter,
I watch my father cut on national television
and whistle my hands into survival. It’s never really over.
I died twice, truly my father’s
daughter and stubborn
on Tuesday s and Thursdays
i return the boroughs to a body bag and claim the streets in his name
*words pulled from speeches and conversations of erica garner
