WEBVTT

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I wrote this poem on
November 24th, 2014,

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which was the night that the
grand jury voted not to indict

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Darren Wilson for
shooting Michael

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Brown, an unarmed black
man in Ferguson, Missouri.

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And it was also the
night that Obama

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had awarded the Presidential
Medal of Freedom,

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posthumously, to
Andrew Goodman, who

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was murdered in Mississippi.

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He was a human rights
worker, activist.

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"A White Man's Wife
Wakes Up in the Night."

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It must have been
lightning that roused me,

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sent a thick-tailed
nightmare scurrying.

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City light around
the shades reveals

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what is and isn't here--

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the husband's side of
the bed made and waiting,

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the city too quiet on this
night of no indictment.

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Don't say "cops," never
"pigs," my father used to say,

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shaking his head
at the local law,

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eating for free at
the corner diner.

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White husband out at what our
white son calls a surf rock

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concert with a white friend
whose side of the bed

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is also made and waiting.

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What was it that woke me?

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When I wonder, "are
we the kind of people

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to go down to Mississippi?"

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there's a we, there's a they,
there's a Mississippi that

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is only in Mississippi.

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"It took the deaths
of two white men,"

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said the brother of
dead Presidential Medal

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of Freedom winner, "to
wake up white America."

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But "we" is still asleep, still
calling for peaceful protest,

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when "we" calls for anything.

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I imagine I love
and unlove those

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I love the way most wives
do so late at night, so

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many years into marriage.

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But not when I walk
scared and vigilant

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down a city street and
not alone in this bed.

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Have I known what it is to
live in a brown body, mother

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a brown child, wait
for a brown husband

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to come home after dark?

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There's that light again,
which is not a squad car.

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I am too certain my man
will come home safely.

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It's just lightning and
no thunder, not even rain.

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