I feel like I had--
my first time around, I got so excited.
I didn't-- express perhaps appropriate gratitude
to the Center, and to you, Diana,
and to everyone involved, and to Duane, and to Tyler who is--
I'm obligated to mention is an Ohioan.
Yes, he is a very proud one too.
Yeah, he's from--
I mean, he's not really from Columbus,
but he might as well be.
It's 30 minutes away.
And to John and Nicole who are two of my favorite poets.
And it's also--
I was thinking The Wire, but really, I
have in this series of poems I wrote about Ferguson--
In 2014, I was in Ferguson twice for the uprisings.
And as someone who, much of my life,
has been engaged with on the ground action,
here at home in Columbus, I still
will say that for being in Ferguson, quote unquote,
"on the ground" during that time was just an immensely
terrifying experience.
And, I think-- when I look at this summer and the landscape
of this summer nationally but also locally where I was at,
I do think some of the ways that the people have learned
to take care of each other through these processes
of uprising and very much present in the streets
type of resistance, those were lessons
that began for a new era, perhaps, in Ferguson.
But I think the toll and the ache
that came with those lessons, I think, is immense.
And so the second time I was there, of course,
was after Darren Wilson's acquittal.
And there was a notorious photo of--
it was around Thanksgiving, and there's
a notorious photo of the season's greeting sign, hanging
in the street, while there's tear gas
and protesters running.
And so this poem's a little bit about that time for me.
"All the TV Shows Are About Cops."
The psychic with the glowing windows next to the pizza shop
tells me, the thing about the end of the world
is that it already happened before you were born.
So I wander through the poisoned leaves of the forest.
From my bare cupped hands, I drink from the brown river
that divides Downtown Columbus between the haves
and the have-nots.
It is easy to understand why America so
adored the photo of tear gas winding its way around season's
greetings hanging over a street in Ferguson,
packed with cops in riot gear.
Somewhere beyond the baton's severing of winter's chill
and the glass being kissed into webs,
one might be able to imagine a family
placing boxes underneath a tree, wearing matching sweaters,
and watching another movie about ghosts.
America loves its contrast, but never its history.
The blades that feast their way through the tree's bark
remember only the sweetness of collapse, not
the joyful gathering, not the ornaments
hand-painted from someone who survived
the riot, generations before the one howling at these doorsteps.
Greetings to this new season of the bandanna
in the back pocket, and then swinging
from a once familiar face.
I breathe in the scent of my own living
to avoid the cars on fire, the way
the eyes burn themselves shut.
A seasonal greeting to the way my heart goes to its own rhythm
when I text, "I love you.
Please tell me you're safe," and hear nothing
back in the time it takes for a person
to be pulled from a car's open window
to the worry that parks itself beneath the skin of my palms.
My homie ran for a fence with a stolen cell phone in his pocket
and didn't hear the cop yelling before he heard the gun go off,
or maybe there was no yelling at all.
Witnesses say one sound can be swallowed by a louder,
more violent ruckus.
Somewhere beyond, a family places a box underneath a tree,
and begins to shovel the already ended Earth,
wondering if this is all the apocalypse has to offer.
Thanks.
Wow.