Remember the world that makes you.
I will remember the world that makes me.
I will not be chosen. I will choose.
I’ll keep my wits about me, like a flock of starlings.
Starlings are real birds, real people.
They choose, too. Do not forsake me.
I will not forsake you.
after Marvin Gaye’s “Inner City Blues,” 2017, ink on paper, 30" x 22.5".
“New Year’s Revolution,” performed at the Poetry Project on January 1, 2017.
This Is Not Normal, January 2017, digital printing on bumper sticker stock, 7.5" x 3", edition of five hundred.
This is What Democracy Looks Like, November 13, 2016, polaroids taken at Philadelphia’s election result protest.
OUR WORDS/WILL BE HEARD
THIS IS WHAT A PUSSY RIOT LOOKS LIKE
TRUMP TWEETS/WE TAKE THE STREETS
HAIL TO THE THIEF
WE ARE WOMEN/WE NEED CHOICE
THEY GO LOW/WE GO HIGH
STAY SHOCKED/STAY WOKE
And the day would be proud of itself going on as if it hadn’t already collapsed, had not
been destroyed, riven, all the people mad and metabolically downcast. It’s around the
eyes, they said. It’s around the hearts. The city was reeling. People were coming out to
the street. In the way they wanted to see where the guy lived and boasted so as to mock
It goes without
saying: something
pounding while
something else
explodes.
my grandmama’s house is now the e.p.a.
call this place home & there’s hell to pay:
shady lane banks steal people’s cribs away,
police departments actin like the kkk,
turncoats treat my prez like a runaway,
we rock the mask & hoodie like a gamma ray,
“Of course being in the grip of death is different from being in a death grip: a suffocating grasp
made in panic or fear. The American Red Cross protocol for rescuing a drowning man used to
include knocking the victim unconscious so as to avoid any panic-induced stranglehold and the
potential drowning of both saved and savior. Perhaps being in death’s grip is being drowned by
