4 poems
arrest the cops
who killed breonna taylor. that is to say,
handcuff their hate until their wrists
clang like liberty bells. make them listen
to how her freedom still rings (not in steel
-clad chimes, but in stories). tell them that
breonna was so cool, her uncle called her
breezy, as if she loved in gusts (strong enough
to shake us like trees until we remember
our roots). tell them breonna’s friends didn’t
mind when she napped through movies or be
-tween hospital shifts. tell them breonna was
essential because black women are essential.
tell them only a coward can take a life spent
saving lives — or worse, steal it in her sleep,
as if afraid to
let her dream.
what do you want to be for halloween
BLACK PANTHER, the boy yelled
to his mom, then dug his tiny fingers into
his tiny palms as if to choose fight over
flight — firm fists over frightened
feet. by the time his mom could say
again? of course, the boy had closed
his eyes, tossed his two tiny fists across
his tiny chest, and hugged his anything-
but-tiny heart (as if he knew that Wakanda
Forever means love yourself, always,
and that loving yourself always means
always loving your people). the boy’s
mom, who echoed his war cry in kind,
let forever linger for so long it almost
remembered its name. but as soon as
she’d crossed her arms to make an X,
the boy opened his eyes and his fists
and his arms to hug his mom even
tighter than he’d hugged his heart. do
you want to be Black Panther because
you want to be king? she asked her
son with a smile. yes, he said, before
closing his eyes again, as if to choose
flight over fight. i want to be king, he
said, but not as much as I want to be
bulletproof.
mr. wilson said
in memory of Michael Brown
the boy grew to bear size of ten little tiny bullets
grizzly and standing not bouncing but
at attention until he trembling on his patient
became nothing tongue and waiting for an
less than a mountain open throat or songs even
casting a shadow dark but no thing came and
on all sides and city- i thought what if he too
shrouding no different is just a peach treeless
than the shadows but not dried or crusted
doubts cast reasonable not a boy just a peach
enough to weld key pitted against my world
locks so tight they and thinking me less than
forget the affliction fuzz sprouting from his
of openness just rind to make my life
like the boy growing known because after all
and gaping his lips it is not important
until their clean split where his hands were
too shadowed songs of the only matter worth
i am hungry but not for swallowing whole was
food or time just that this boy was
bullets yes bullets not just alive but
i swear i watched the living fast and out
boy swallow each one loud and growing like
by one by one by one voices filling streets
until they too sought and melting into one
freedom in shadows hymnal hum so yes
bouncing against teeth i watched the mountain
backs to clamor like fall like a child
protest feet or breathing uncradled and forgetting
drums now muted and to run and thought how
brackish from summers’ can every one of them
bang bang bang bang be small and black
until this very moment enough to sink like my
too became a symphony bullets but never make a
sound?
black math
ADD twelve-and-a-half million, torn from their
homes like pages from genesis where god lived long
before men turned men into un-precious cargo —
bundled like sticks that begged for a flame, tossed
like holy water into ship hulls and reminded that
being a slave means breathing your last breath over
and over and over and until your oxygen becomes a
snare drum, increasing its tempo until it can do
nothing but stop.
SUBTRACT one-and-half million — the
fortunate few who never saw the shore (the
starved, the scurvied, the dehydrated and the
dystenaried) commonly referred to in u.s.
history textbooks as “collateral damage”.
SUBTRACT the thousands who saw the sea
raging just feet from where they stood, and
jumped, some holding hands, seeing not death
but baptism and knowing how god gives life
through water.
ADD my great-great-great-grandfather, turned from
a king to cattle by men who feared the way he
wielded his crown.
ADD my great-great-great-grandmother, singing
freedom songs that shook the chains at her hands
and feet until they chimed like church bells.
ADD thirty million more, plantation born and power
stripped, pulling their hands from cotton bales to
push their palms together — locking lifelines before
bowing their heads and digging their elbows into
their ribs and praying to find their north star or
simply tomorrow’s sun.
SUBTRACT those whose prayers were left
unanswered — the ten million whose hands
built the white house and the capitol building
and america only to rest beneath its soil
shouldering the weight of the world that they
made.
ADD their children and their children’s children, the
emancipated, those born out of bondage, bouncing
on their mothers’ laps and laughing from their
bellies to learn how freedom sounds.
ADD my grandmother’s grandmother, a
one-room-church preacher who could read the bible
and nothing else, including the deed of one hundred
acres of land she signed away — stolen by those
who feared black land because black land was black
power.
SUBTRACT the millions more who upon
gaining freedom lost everything because back
then being black meant nothing belonged to
you.
SUBTRACT the massacred and murdered, the
garroted and guillotined, the burned and
buried.
SUBTRACT the lynched.
then, ADD the brave who joined together to stop a
nation from breaking black bodies. the hundreds of
thousands who wanted to work and vote and learn
so they marched and marched and marched and
sang we shall overcome until the buildings that their
grandparents built shook beneath their soil as if to
say what i gave you i can take away.
ADD one man who spoke for millions and sought to
awaken a nation with a dream.
SUBTRACT him.
ADD my father at fifteen years old, riding his bike
across town to catch a glimpse of that man floating
through the street in an unadorned casket, carried
through a crying crowd as my father bowed his head
and closed his eyes and then opened them again.
ADD everyone my father saw, unlocking their
elbows to raise their arms and clench their fists and
reach one towards god as if waiting to be counted.
A.T. McWilliams is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and essayist living in Brooklyn, NY. His poems, which predominantly focus on his experiences as a Black American, have appeared in the Missouri Review, Southern Humanities Review, Prelude Magazine, Main Street Mag, Radius Literary Magazine, Rogue Agent Journal, Storyscape Journal, Blunderbuss Magazine and elsewhere. His essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Slate, The Guardian, Complex, Mic and elsewhere. You can find more of his work at atmcwilliams.com.