– Poet Ross Gay in an extraordinary essay in The Sun (sez Lillian Allen).

Feels like some kind of poetry!

“What if we acknowledged the drug war, and the resulting mass incarceration of African Americans, and the myriad intermediate crimes against citizens and communities as a product of our fears? And what if we thereby had to reevaluate our sense of justice and the laws and procedures and beliefs that constitute it? What if we honestly assessed what we have come to believe about ourselves and each other, and how those beliefs shape our lives? And what if we did it with generosity and forgiveness? What if we did it with mercy?”

– Poet Ross Gay in an extraordinary essay in The Sun (Lillian Allen).

Lillian Allen, “Broken”

Turn to poetry:

Boy broken on sidewalk
Sidewalk broken beneath boy
– Lillian Allen, “Broken”

 

The boy is broken on the sidewalk
The sidewalk is broken beneath him
His colour is back (not black)
Because it was washed out
Worrisome for his aunt
Whose leg was taken to save her life
No, not diabetes but from shrapnel            Flying

What have we forgotten to say
to give the heart ease
Just out of diapers when learning to walk
the body seeks an inherent language of peace

What do you wish to be?
Happy, I’m sure

You may ask;
Whose voice is in my head, so fully formed?
So old and heavy with pain and venge
Behind the lead(er) passage is set
Funeral is the badge

Language now frozen symbols
Symbols like bells calling
Calling to the divide
Fists and blows and broken
Splayed like shrapnel on the sidewalk

Fall away   fall away
What do you wish for the world
What do you wish for your heart
Boy broken on sidewalk
Sidewalk broken beneath boy