
Shayla Hawkins
WebsiteYears: 1996, 1998, 2000
Biography
Why do I love to write? Why do I feel I must write? What am I supposed to write? Did I choose writing, or did writing choose me? And what gift can I possibly add to the trove of the world's great literary treasures?
I've been pondering those questions, and many others, since childhood, and still am not entirely sure. But with every poem (and short story and book review and essay) I write, the answers get closer and clearer.
Since that first summer I went to Cave Canem, my vision of what my writing can and should be has become starkly more translucent. And the best definition I can offer about my dreams and demands as a writer are epitomized in my profile picture.
If you look closely at that photo, you'll notice the backdrop of the Caribbean Sea. That water is or possesses everything I wish to become and want my writing to be: Elegant, fluid, timeless, deep, shimmering and kissed with Heaven's light.
Poem
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