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  Books. Change. Lives.

  Copyright © 2021 by Martina Green McGowan, MD

  Cover and internal design © 2021 by Sourcebooks

  Cover and internal art by Diana Ejaita

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—­except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—­without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.

  Published by Sourcebooks

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-­4410

  (630) 961-­3900

  sourcebooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is on file with the publisher.

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  I Am the Rage

  Forever Lost between Sunlight and Shadow

  Motivated Forgetting

  Human Enough

  Navigating This Hazardous Terrain

  Benediction Number 9

  There Is Too Little Time

  America’s Postpartum Depression

  In My Rearview Mirror

  America’s Music

  Numb to the News

  Rhetoric

  We Still Stand (Noble and Proud)

  A Shocking New Race War

  How Could We Not Have Appreciated That

  Why We Beat Our Children

  A New Song

  Not Again

  Be Careful What You Ask of Me

  Traffic Stop

  How You Hate to Rape Me

  Tale of Two Georges

  America, Something Is Wrong

  Juneteenth

  We Are Alike, You and I

  BIPOC

  Spoken Words Fail Me But…

  Cultural Upheaval

  Today, I Cannot…

  What Sadness We Carry in Ordinary Times

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  To my daughter and my best friend, Amanda, who listens to my stories and poems with great patience, gives honest critique, but more importantly, lends unwavering support to my projects.

  To all the Mothers and Fathers of Children of Color.

  To my father.

  America, once again, has civil and racial unrest with protesters flooding our cities, calling for justice for all, with people being detained, brutalized, and murdered on the streets, as well as in their homes, without the benefit of due process. These and other heinous crimes are sadly not new to our nation, nor do they show any signs of ending.

  I am the American Heartbreak –­

  The rock on which Freedom

  Stumped its toe –­

  The great mistake

  That Jamestown made

  Long ago.

  —­Langston Hughes, 1951

  I Am the Rage

  I Am the Rage

  I am the rage, roiling just beneath the surface

  I am the dream deferred

  Again

  I am the promises kneaded and repeated

  But never kept

  I am the air between light and dark

  Fueling flames that burn,

  but can neither be consumed

  nor satisfy its own abiding hunger

  I am the glowing embers you continue to poke and prod

  with meanness

  That bubbles over onto the streets

  I am the ravenous appetite to destroy

  Something

  Anything

  I am the ever-­present clanking chains

  In the belly of the cargo hold

  Struggling to love myself

  A thing You have taught me to loathe

  I am the dismal days and inky skies

  I am the niggardly feeling that there is not enough

  Will never be enough

  Money

  Land

  Freedom

  Education

  Life

  To satisfy us all

  I am the outrage that flares every time you say something foolish like

  “I thought you were already free.”

  I am the disappointment that breathes hot and silent

  Every time I am dismissed

  Discharged

  Dishonored

  Cast aside

  Counted as worthless or meaningless

  I am the melody that lies inside every Negro spiritual

  That sings praises of diminishing hopes in this life

  And a brighter, fairer world in the next

  I am the mother who wields the belt that cuts both ways

  that beats my children

  in hopes that You will spare their lives

  I am the salty tears of anxious mothers

  Frightened each time her child crosses the threshold

  Praying for a return that is not guaranteed

  Like payment of some impossible garnishee on the lives we want for them

  I am the furthest point from You

  Thrashing about in the sea of doom

  Gasping for air

  I am the dark fiber that runs through our shared history

  that will not allow You to forget

  A constant reminder to us both

  that I can never go home

  Can never find home

  I am the rage, running unbridled through the streets

  I am the fire this time

  I am the rapacious thirst seeking justice for all

  On these dusky days and obsidian nights

  I am the rage that lives within the powder keg

  of unfulfilled lives

  Awaiting the spark

  I am the rage

  I am the lost sheep

  I am the muted prayer that we will

  see each other clearly one day

  Forever Lost between Sunlight and Shadow

  For Breonna

  Caught between sunlight and shadow

  Yesterday she lived carefree

  Perhaps again tomorrow, she thought

  Except that

  This day she was murdered

  In her home

  Asleep

  Defending her love

  Defending her peace

  Thinking she was free from the shackles and the shadows of history and hate

  But we are never free

  Yesterday she went to work

  And helped people

  And laughed

  Remembered bright days

  And smiled her beautiful, luminous smile

  Yesterday the shadow had not yet issued the “no knock” warrant

  Yesterday the shadow that haunts us all had not yet battered down her door

  In the middle of the night

  Whe
re she slept

  Thinking she still belonged to the sunlight

  Yesterday she spoke with her mother

  Transported people to the hospital

  Held their hands and shared in their moments of pain and darkness

  Yesterday she ordered lunch with her friends

  Yesterday she planned on going out Friday night

  And maybe Saturday night too

  Stop downtown to pick up some barbecue

  Thought about what she could learn at work

  To improve herself

  To earn more pay

  To rise through the ranks

  Yesterday she did not know that the shadow was so very, very close

  In fact

  Only a few hours and eight bullets away

  Yesterday she thought she still had time to bask in the glow of a thousand tomorrows

  Yesterday she lived at the right address

  Not a great address

  But her address nonetheless

  Where she could walk outside

  And laugh with friends

  And hang on to the bright promise of hope

  Yesterday she did not know that

  The wrong address would become her address

  That the person she would be mistaken for would already be in jail

  That there would never, ever be another tomorrow

  Yesterday she did not know

  That her light would be erased

  That she and the shadow would finally become one

  Yesterday her calendar was full of hope

  Promise packed to the margins

  But no more

  Never again to think of tomorrow

  Her light, brutally extinguished by the shadow

  Bent on destroying us all

  Motivated Forgetting

  Whips, chains, and shackles

  Mark the apocalyptic turn of all darker peoples

  Whips we continue to use on ourselves in corralling

  Our unnatural naturally violent nature

  Or so You tell us

  The intensity of life has not changed in these 400 years

  200 years as freed-­men and freed-­women

  Or, only free-­ish

  Our lives only remaining physically intact if we can continue to outrun

  The slave patrollers and the police

  There is no afterward for such brutal and bestial treatment

  Unless you consider heaven

  Maybe

  There is only motivated forgetting of the cruelty endured all these centuries

  There are fragile hopes that die

  On the fluttering wings of butterflies

  But there is no life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness

  Here

  Human Enough

  With diminishing confidence

  We send out our heart-­sensors

  To try to remember where our children are supposed to be

  And at the same time

  To touch the God that binds us

  To each other

  The God that binds us to each other

  Tries to break that awkward silence now filling our homes

  As we review our day’s journey

  And begin to wonder where our children truly are

  And if they will return

  If they will return unharmed

  Once again on this freedom’s eve

  In a world that denies the proclamation of their

  emancipation

  Reminding them daily that they are not free

  To be

  To love

  To breathe

  To live in peace

  To have the time to reflect and contemplate

  To reflect on the days that we have lived

  And contemplate what the tomorrows may bring

  But we already know

  Tomorrow will bring the same fear

  The same fear that we are unequal

  That we are still three-fifths human

  On a good day

  And on a bad day

  We are not human at all

  Never completely whole people

  Never entirely free from bondage

  Never free from violent assaults on the body and the mind

  The violent assaults of the mind and the streets

  Force mothers and fathers

  To our knees

  To hold watchnight service within our hearts daily

  To daily hold watchnight service in our hearts

  To bring our beautiful three-­fifths human children home again

  Singing songs of sorrow

  Songs of oppression

  Slave songs

  Sometimes we simply rock and moan

  We stand, we kneel, we pray

  Sometimes in our private prayer closets

  But always in our hearts

  Always from our hearts

  We reach out to the God that keeps us

  And binds to each other

  Bent low before the One Source

  Backs broken in prayer and supplication.

  Backs broken in prayer and supplication

  Tonight and every night is watch night vigil for my child

  Prayerfully asking

  On this night

  Will my child be human enough

  To return to me unharmed

  Navigating This Hazardous Terrain

  We navigate this hazardous terrain

  Trying to advise You that there is indeed a struggle

  There is a gap

  Seeking a seat at the table

  To plead our cause

  When You claim there is no cause for alarm

  No brutality

  No violence

  No otherness

  To seek restitution for our lives distorted by

  A people who would douse our incandescent spirits

  Take away our languages

  And rename our tribes

  A delicate and deliberate climb

  Out of the slimy pit

  Continually living on the edge of change and promise

  Never fulfilled

  Surviving a waking nightmare

  Beseeching You to break the shackles

  You refuse to acknowledge even exist

  Holding back the violence inherent in unrecognized anger

  Which will rise to bloodshed again and again

  Because the struggle to bridge the gap

  is way too real

  And far too much to contain in this puny vessel

  This mortal flesh

  Always just a hairsbreadth away from death

  As we continue to navigate this hazardous terrain

  Benediction Number 9

  I must to let you go, my friend

  Although friend is not the right term

  My acquaintance is perhaps closer than mark

  Floating in the outer rim of your influence and sight line

  The smallest speck of consideration in how you think and see

  Letting go of the noose that binds us

  to what we could have been to each other

  Teacher

  Mentor

  The peace we could have brokered

  The good we could have done

  Together

  For months, or is it years, I have tried to whitewash

  the frayed baggage of the beliefs

  you carry

  And cherish

  And cling to

  Beliefs I thought we could investigate together

  And learn from each other

  But
your vile language

  And contemptible moral superiority

  Can no longer be tolerated

  And, in case you did not know,

  Tolerate is not a word of friendship

  In this moment of crisis

  Which should mark a time of change

  You go back to your safe space

  And you announce that you are done with trying

  Done with conversation

  You would have joined us in the struggle but…

  But the protest did not go the way you wanted

  The rage spilled over from cracked cups of peace to looting and burning

  As it always does

  Your insolence and blindness

  Can no longer be sanctioned by my heart

  The underlying, all-too-familiar cadence of this equality dance

  has grown laboriously burdensome to my spirit

  I wish you well in protecting your moral high ground

  But I now know

  I can no longer call you friend

  If I ever could

  There Is Too Little Time

  There is too little time to teach our children

  That there is no after

  To this ubiquitous feeling that

  Life is but a stream

  Trailing from our bodies

  Almost unseen

  There is too little time to spoon-feed our children

  Giving them false hope and false hype while

  Trying to convince ourselves that

  The world can be full of wonder and fair

  But they are not free to hold it

  There is too little time to teach our children

  That the fairy-light touch

  Can quickly turn into a bite from a policeman’s club

  There is too little time to teach our children

  To say “Aye” to all that life has to offer

  And to every passing whim

  Knowing it will not be offered to them

  There is too little time to teach our children

  To fight to keep their spirits free

  The insignificance of a hope for tomorrow

  Managing the lies of the apostles and apostates alike

  The sweetness of oranges

  The tiny moments that make life sweet

  The defiance built into their very DNA

  There is too little time to allow our children

  to be children

  America’s Postpartum Depression

  We can hear it in the streets