Two poems by Justin Davis
to protest a reduction in benefits. Almost 40% of the City’s general fund is spent on policing.
It’s flu season and I’m sick of bills. It’s all
Destiny’s Child: bills, bills, bills. We have
armored trucks and SkyCops and no food.
We have body cams and no food and the body
cams are never recording. Have you ever been
denied so much you came down with a blue flu?
Have you ever been as blue as a jar of Blue Magic,
set of blueprints, a river filling with femurs, dull,
red kidneys? I’ve heard the cops started as a better
way to catch niggas. Somehow a person with no-
thing is always the most dangerous. How many
times have my taxes paid for riot shields
cliquing together like birds? How much over-
time occupies my block and its quiet? Look:
I lock the door when I’m sure no one’s coming.
I ask the ghetto bird, if only briefly, to wait. All my
life, I’ve been asking for a park. Fresh oranges
that don’t take 3 hours to bring home.
|
As “This Is America” wins Song of the Year, I think about George Washington, his bodies, his money, his throat throbbing with rain. You could say that he died of a bloodletting. You could say he chased blackness with handcuffs until he died: a woman, Martha’s favorite, the way a farmer holds a favorite heifer. She left them both while they were eating dinner, lived decades as a fugitive, said, “I won’t go anywhere without a bargain. You know my niggas need representation. You know my niggas need guarantees.” Hit up by the press, she was living all godly. She married a sailor, had children, learned to read. Isn’t that so American—running from an intractable danger, hoping it might forget about us? She hid inside her life and lived. |
