Notes after Watching the Inauguration

I walk campus and wonder if I’m standing

on an unmarked grave. Are we under

concrete, grass, or any other forced terrains?

I wonder again, this time, if violence is

a remix of what the making of America

is while white boys blare music. They use

MAGA banners as decoration on white walls

down the hall from Starbucks. Is Starbucks

a stand-in for brother? Time is a mark

of body decay and not much else.

⸺

Before I was a poet, I was a lineage. One that

asked questions of the diner when they didn’t

let us in, one asking if I’d like my mocha

with the white chocolate as white girls

celebrate victory. Who wins when I decide

white. Before I was human, I was free,

which is the healthiest of human abstractions.

Free has the best marketing team. I am

the violence that forced itself into life.

⸺

In an alternate timeline, I was someone

with less life taken up by what kills me.

More sure I had a home, its history

singed in paneled pink walls. Sure

that it was mine and safe to dance in;

I was happier there, since there are

no inaugurations. There are no cameras

capturing my ending.

At the protest, I see them with their cameras.

They snapped faces of weary elders

in their cameras. They got BLM as hashtag,

Blackness as temporary and distant

in their cameras. Can they, through bright

silence and access to hope, see me?

They got the whole wide world watching us

perish. They got the whole wide world

in their terror-lens.

Turn off your Wi-Fi. Bring plenty

of water. Wear masks and gloves;

get up when they spray you.

Call for help, call for anybody

but them. Singe contacts on

your skin. They get mad when they

can see your camera. If you listen

to the chants enough times,

you’ll catch on perfectly. Broken hearts

in unison sound easy, like doomsday.

⸺

When the white folks come for me,

When the state troopers come for me,

When the graveyard comes for me,

When the Starbucks comes for me,

When the cameras come for me,

When Republicans come for me,

When Democrats come for me,

When my own demise comes for me,

Who will answer the door?

⸺

This is not my house. Someone else

must open it.