History
       

While you never requested
passage, your passport was
stamped, forceps delivered

you into its environs. Shock
set lungs howling. Its current
tugs but is rarely noted—father

parts a cloud of DDT, runs
after it; mother exits the dank
brownstone with an abortion;

South hocks, spits you across
the continent. It's only clear
from afar—this play ends in

a dead president, the blitz
begins with that siren. Still,
white faces squinted up at

lynched men, among them,
children still alive. And we
neglect to ask what they saw,

when they turned away, as if
today is a raft floated on, not
the wave, dragging us under.

Tweet
Copyright © 2019 Luiza Flynn-Goodlett All rights reserved
from Third Coast
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission