Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in South Florida, against my better judgement. I then fled to Jackson, MS and am now settling in the Delta, where we may not have many chain banks but we have plenty of Waffle Houses and grit.
Those Killed in Mississippi
Those killed in Mississippi, for those killed by police brutality in this red hot summer where my lipstick stains my teeth and leaves circles, halos around my mouth, leaving the mirror mistaking it for blood-
We do not have an answer, but we are here to hear you, the incorporation of bodies into folk legends, the creation of a story entirely composed by lost teeth, our dead make the castles and soon the rotting bodies cannot be ignored.
Something will happen, and this is not the “something” of folk songs or hopes. We are on the precipice of something big and something yearning and soon something or someone will fall into the whole we have made us. Soon something will cause us a fight and I stand anxiously, waiting like the moment a child waits for a parent to start blows to an other and the police are here and the police are always watching and I cannot tell you how many police have come to my door.
There are black folks dying. There are trans folks dying. Sandra Bland is dead and dying in the media all at once, suspended in the moment right before she gives wing to eternal life. In our minds the dead are always the dying, transitive verb tense and here where we speak to news we give life, we are waiting, we are waiting, we are waiting and here-
Tiger tiger burning bright, through the forests of the night, what immortal hand or eye, has framed thy fearful symmetry?
