THE CIRCLE

“Will the circle be unbroken, by and by, Lord, by and by?”

     ~ Traditional gospel hymn

 

An unbroken circle

of black bodies broken

in American streets

turned to winding sheets

 

Michael Brown

the circle’s latest member

a black kid vibrant

with teenage bravado

until he met a cop’s ammunition

 

Each bullet

a horizontal neutron bomb

bursting his organs

blasting apart his bones

 

until his ruined body

like that officer’s bullets

became just another shell

that fell to the street

 

his soul slipping

out of his flesh

like his blood

 

looking down

at his own mangled corpse

left to lie for four hours

in Missouri’s August heat

 

wondering how he

so recently filled with life

and flaws and a future

so suddenly became

a ghost at the end

of a white man’s gun

but no one

can hear his questions

and no one

answers them

 

So Michael Brown

has no choice

but to take his place

in the deadly ring

of murdered

and unavenged black lives

where he sees

 

Trayvon Martin

and Eric Garner

 

Emmett Till

and Oscar Grant

 

Sean Bell

 

Amadou Diallo

 

and they swap stories

and wait in dread

for the circle’s next member

 

whose face

whose life

whose death

whose killer

 

will be different

and yet

so much

like their own