by Dubian Ade
We have lived barely. Our naked bodies
clothed with thinning patience. Kept
warm between chapped hands rubbed
together, pealed at the cuticle smell of
deferred dreams
in Chicago it gets so cold.
In New York it gets so cold.
It takes the cold to realize that
maybe these buildings could make a good bonfire.
We watched in front of the TV screen the
night Baltimore made a name for its self.
Broadcast to the colonized the possibility
of exploding cars, molotov bottles, state
troopers who had soiled their uniforms
and will hang them up on cloths pins to
dry tomorrow.
I curl up underneath my rage to keep
warm and live out my vengeance through
the TV screen, my aggression vicarious,
extended outward.
My blood boils. Bubbling underneath the
skin like Fanon's Leukemia.
It is the possibility of the thing.
To be beaten in the streets and not roll over to
die. To respond with anything lying within
reach. A plank, a bat, a machete.
To be resurrected from police custody.
Freddie Gray's ghost poring gasoline onto
garbage cans. Sandra Bland throwing
hands with lieutenants. Water for the
martyr lamented.
Some of us are too young to remember
Watts. Killing us with white fragility we
forgot the possibility. Of the people giving
birth each second they destroy.
You misunderstand us. So we speak in
the language of now and borrowed
tongue. A violent system can only
understand violence. There is nothing
reasonable about occupation. There is nothing
reasonable about racism. There
is nothing reasonable about rape.
You misunderstand us. So come, let me show you:
There are revolts beneath my tongue and
under my eyelids. I did not put them
there.
Who put them there?
THE DECOLONIZER
November 2015
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