on tuesday,
dylann roof was sentenced to his death.
on tuesday we tried
to make one body feel like nine.
to make one body feel like justice.
on tuesday we said
there has got to be some price to pay
for entering the house of god
with a sinful tongue
and a handgun.

today,
six days later,
we remembered the rev. dr. martin luther king, jr.
we looked at the world,
called it a place with potential for change,
called it that because there has to be some softer way
to look at bloodshed,
for sanity’s sake.
if not then
all that remains is a solitary image of dr. king rolling in his grave because he knows,
knows that breathless black bodies
are a constant,
are transcenders of time,
whether sunken in rivers,
hung from taut ropes,
or bathing in blood on historic church floors,
singing, singing, screaming, shrill
for some messiah bringing mercy, mercy, mercy.

felicia sanders wants mercy:
prays for it, wills it down from up above,
unfolded from the hands of god
so that it might fall upon the head and in the eyes
and within the very being
of the man who killed her son.


it takes a certain grace —
one so foreign to me i can hardly write of it —
to see god in such men who deliberately defy Him,
to ask that heaven’s gates
be so indiscriminate and overt.
i would want him to burn for this.
but it is not my say,
not my life,
not my long, resounding, unflinching “hallelujah!”
not my certain type of grace.

breathless black bodies
are a constant,
are transcenders of time, a recurring motif.
but so too, then, is the black body full
of breath,
that inhales and exhales faith
without ceasing.

such is the black body
that sees a little bit of god in dylann roof,
that prays that he prays for forgiveness,
that thinks there to be but one kingdom,
and he, too,
a worthy subject.

the solitary image of dr. king rolling in his grave
is not a surprise.
the black body has always known
so well
how to die.

but felicia sanders hopes her son’s killer finds mercy.
perhaps the one thing the black body has always known better
is how to love.

(a.m.)

We are supposed to be at the hospital. The rest of my family is already there. My wife is yelling up the stairs. What am I doing. What's going on. We have to leave.

But I can't leave. I'm listening to a song. Searching it. I may have already heard it some thousands of times in my life. But this time is different. I'm listening for something. Something I think I’ve heard in it before. Only, at this moment it's kind of a life and death thing.

Forty miles away my sister lies in a Philadelphia hospital bed. Unconscious. Around her several machines sustain her life. My six other sisters and three brothers shuffle around and breathe the rest of the oxygen out of the room.  Right now, they're waiting for me to arrive so that we can end her life together. But I can't do it. I can't get up. I can't even make my legs move. I look down at my feet. My shoes. How do I put them on? At forty-one I'm so ashamed at all that I do not know.

Sitting here, frozen. Looking for answers from a Led Zeppelin song. It's just a reminder of how worthless I've become. Though, the truth is that I've never been good at anything. And this is my dilemma. How do I learn to become the man my family needs me to be, while somehow keeping the important parts of my world the same...as in not losing my sister.

For me, right now, only one thing is true; as long as I sit here, my sister is alive. As soon as I go there, *she dies.

Somewhere in the Eden,
where man has lost his right to even go,
somewhere in this Garden
man killed all that once did grow.

To prove we are pathetic
we invade lands that have no walls
Claim the land, and all its living
and make them subject to our laws.

Now, the water dark with death,
and the shore line rich with crude,
and its the men who now can't fish
who are the one's so quick to sue.

But, who speaks for the otters?
or the eagles?
or the land?
What attorney represents them
in the unnatural court of man?

Yet, to even just repay them,
for destroying their families, lives and homes?
The best way we could start?
Is just get out. Leave them alone.