This next one is called "The Violence of Pronoun."
I wrote it once listening to a group of students
talking in the cafeteria.
And they were just responding to being
Black students in a predominantly white campus.
And I just listen to things they had to say.
And in the process of doing that, what I tried to do
is take the issues that they were
dealing with in this run it nail up or a voice that would speak.
Think of some particular incidents that I knew about.
And just bring the boys to life.
It's called The Violence of Pronoun.
Loving came her way vicious.
It rose up from the Earth and made her father's hand
around her throat a bird of prey and carried her away in mind
like a limp patient.
He was not drunk.
It is worse.
In this world, we cannot feel.
In my sociology class for understanding Black folks,
they try to understand our homes like buckshot.
What we have done to love is unforgivable.
They took out rakes and treated us like dirt.
It was so perfect.
They asked for grades.
Leaving people out of this, I can forgive.
I married her anyway.
And in the church when I unfolded her hand,
I saw it in her palm the way she would die leaping out
of democracy through some weird window,
white with the wilderness of God 1965 Memorial Day.
And I went on crazy at first.
And crazy even now for being so militant.
What I told that class they said it hurt.
It is our innocence that makes us vicious.