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Daily Deviation
Daily Deviation
June 8, 2015
Hello Neighbor - a Suburban Conversation on Race by BlackBowfin really cuts to the issue.
Featured by HugQueen
Suggested by MotleyDreams
Literature Text
hello neighbor, i know that
we were supposed to welcome
a retired police officer's arrival
an ushering-in
of a safer enclave, but i
never expected much from you
i don't expect that you're
self-aware enough
to remember
how our mutual whiteness
lulled you into telling me
how you'd so longed to live
in the suburbs
among your own kind
i believe that you phrased it as
"not with the black and spanish"
i also don't expect
that you felt ashamed, when
you saw my wife
who is dark-mixed of
both these dangerous tones-
i do expect that you
probably assumed
that she works here
cleaning, maybe
not expecting much
makes it easier
not to hate you
because hate
is a heavy burden
and you're already
packing more
than a whole block's worth
and i can't lie, that i
don't relish, but still
take a small amount
of comfort
in your frustration, when those boys
broke into your house
to steal nothing but your comfort
and ease, to let you know
that they'd been there
and i don't expect you
found any justice
in the irony of a black cop's response
to your call and insistence
to press charges
with merely a suggestion
to maybe, next time
not call people niggers
for cutting through your yard
and i still don't expect much
but that sounds like a good start
we were supposed to welcome
a retired police officer's arrival
an ushering-in
of a safer enclave, but i
never expected much from you
i don't expect that you're
self-aware enough
to remember
how our mutual whiteness
lulled you into telling me
how you'd so longed to live
in the suburbs
among your own kind
i believe that you phrased it as
"not with the black and spanish"
i also don't expect
that you felt ashamed, when
you saw my wife
who is dark-mixed of
both these dangerous tones-
i do expect that you
probably assumed
that she works here
cleaning, maybe
not expecting much
makes it easier
not to hate you
because hate
is a heavy burden
and you're already
packing more
than a whole block's worth
and i can't lie, that i
don't relish, but still
take a small amount
of comfort
in your frustration, when those boys
broke into your house
to steal nothing but your comfort
and ease, to let you know
that they'd been there
and i don't expect you
found any justice
in the irony of a black cop's response
to your call and insistence
to press charges
with merely a suggestion
to maybe, next time
not call people niggers
for cutting through your yard
and i still don't expect much
but that sounds like a good start
Literature
Disaster films are more honest than you realize.
It was a few years ago; I was eating in a Chinese restaurant with my parents. The place was built with a ton on windows going around the perimeter - you could see out three of four walls.
The entrance was set up oddly - the register cut off the corner where the door was to make a triangular lobby of sorts. Behind the register was a large aquarium. The fish could be seen from nearly anywhere in the restaurant; a few large goldfish, what I assume was a grouper of some kind, and even a black eel, amongst an assortment of smaller fish happily living together in the fake seaweed and castle.
My family and I were sitting towards the back of the p
Literature
Stray
My father
alone in the white, white room.
This place, which is not empty
but emptied
which was my fig leaf, my raison
de fierté
seems small as a crab shell.
Enough for his back,
his hideous grief.
Little else. It is unforgivable
to leave him so little
to leave him, that dark body
in that blinding room.
Literature
an infinitesimal sibilance
a wisp of a whisper
remains in possessions
long after we're gone
perhaps forever
things we create
or build
or just treasure
faint echoes of others
faint echoes of us
still here
llp - dA - oct2013
DD - jun03/2015
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Take it for what it's worth: race relations in the American suburbs. Lemme know where it hits you. Everybody has a story or two like this- what's yours? Comments welcome.
FYI- I don't use that word lightly. I thought that the facts of this occasion warranted it.
Peace Out, Friends!
More works within a similar vein:
FYI- I don't use that word lightly. I thought that the facts of this occasion warranted it.
Peace Out, Friends!
More works within a similar vein:
Staged as if Crashednight hangs from a tree
in a body
that somehow became
both more and less
than just a body, became
an expendable indicator
of where and what we are,
a weather balloon, of sorts
hanging, staged
as if crashed into the treeline
instrumentation logging
compiling, yet
another garish
open-casket data set
another boy burnt
split, swollen
blown open like a flower
staged, as if purposely
nursed into the shape
of the pine box around him
night has always known
a terror in sunrise,
that of its sons
swaying in the treeline,
sunken in the quarry, or
chalked onto the sidewalk
that of its sons
with empty hands
that look like guns
in the panicked seconds
when a war on many
descends on one
Field Songssomething ancient singsand to some extent-
in and under
the pulse of the field, chants
the rhythm
of work,
retells the bake
of burning cotton suns
and still bears
the shadows, memories
of the daughters and sons
burnt into it,
something still works
its way up
from the tang and timbre
of field-dust and chain
up through
the spectacle noose
of a lynching
postcard
up from
the brass bell ring
of shell casings
hitting concrete
and up
t
Blood Orangesrarely
is water mixed
into the drinking-lead
of this neighborhood,
it rarely factors
into the weight or when
of time-released
chalk outlines,
packed and bagged
like sand
into bodies
here, time throws stones
and hops over
sidewalk patterns
of the upright, now
no longer so,
here, poison
postures for battle,
for accidents
to happen, for
a human timer's flinch
to trigger its release
and each particle
un-bagged, settles
like oranges, fallen
from the torn
grocery sack,
semi-circling in
short, dropped orbits
of thud and concrete
stopped and stuck
on the surface tension
of a puddle, once a person
once a planet
of possibilities, somehow
never meant
to find its sun,
born only
to be unborn, and here
a screaming mother sifts
through asteroid gravel,
womb ablaze
melting down
the tape and barricades
of a universe just ended
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Comments73
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Ouch. Well done.