Chicago

We preach freedom around the world, but are we to say to the world, and much more importantly, to each other, that this is a land of the free except for Negroes?
--President JFK, 1963

The boy on the green line holds
tight & fast to the rail as we rock
from Chicago. he is young enough
to be my brother—this manhood
is something borrowed from his
father’s sock drawer, the magazine
under the bed, the things he thinks
he knows. I am birthed from this
madness, I know the train’s hum,
its rick-rick-thud as we climb.

& when the boy flashes his slick-
backed piece of man—how hard
he hits the floor, how smooth his jaw
graces the rail—the gun church-shining
in his palm as he falls. The boys come
steady as dogs to this train-car, this
fight, they come with their knives
and they steal & fight & say the things
they think they know and we shake
our heads and think he is not one of us.
Dear Chicago, the wheel of violence
spins so fast all the colors blur together.
This city is heavy in them, dark as a body
on the floor.

Chicago is the most segregated
cities in the world. Here, we learn
all the ways to separate, to assimilate,
to take from the other, we give names
to what we cannot understand. To
the boy on the green-line—your skin
a deep wood—you are my father
and my brother, a martyr for why
we write poems like this.

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