LAMENTATIONS
One
America more guns more than us
Bullets bullets bullets bullets more
Children in school boy in park no sorrow
Dead in her yard his car no sorrow like
Exit while being Black gone without
Two
February 2012
oughta be a law
against we gotta stand
up for justice how many
justices one for you and
even if a witness stand
your ground
~
stand stood should
he have stayed in his
what kind of case is that a brief
case of life what kind of ground
that can’t be walked on back
from a store with candy
~
something with un
in it something
to use to stand
against a person of
standing to un
a boy of
Three
August 2019
El Paso at least 20 a manifesto Hispanic
invasion a mother shielding now 22
her baby the father a 90-year-old
Dayton at least 9 patrons inside
& outside a bar now 10 including
the killer had made a kill list
Midland Odessa at least 5 shooting
while driving the killer had failed
a background check now 8
Four
driving home from the grocery store with his girlfriend
facing the cop with his hands up, stop don’t shoot
a woman who’d been a man, for being a woman
Blacks for being Black, Muslims . . . Jews . . .
a gang member shot by a gang member shot by a gang
a gang member raised in a high-crime neighborhood
suffered years of abuse, a restraining order
woke with a gun pressed to the back of her neck
on her first day of school, with her sister, by her father
by her 2-year-old, who found the gun in her purse
himself, with a rented gun at a target practice
himself, had lost his job, could not support
himself, herself, themselves for being somewhere
by someone, someone else, themselves, a gun
FIVE
Remember our people killed by guns
we have more guns than people
Remember our 100 people killed each day
the shot and injured
Remember our 1000 killed each year by police
a quarter Black
Remember our children and youth
a mother whose son
Remember she said they say remember us
By the same author
Martha Collins: Up North
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