So at first I wanted to make another video and I thought I could do it on the weekend or after work but motherhood and overtime and then I got to image-hunting and name-searching and each name led to another name and another name and the people and I wept Again and then I got angry Again and I got my fancy microphone to read June Jordan’s “Poem About My Rights” and played with filters in Garage Band and thought about going for a walk in the almost dark and having my teenager film me in a flowered dress and sun hat walking barefoot by the creek and grazing summer sunflowers with my fingertips like in a wistful movie intro or tampon commercial but then I get up and I hurt everywhere my body aches I feel heavy and as the sun goes down I realize I don’t have time to make the kind of video I want to make because I have to get up at 5:30am to start work and I want to not feel this pain everywhere and I want to not be so tired I can’t move but fibromyalgia exists and even though it reminds me of grief what does any of this whining have to do with Michael Brown when my beautiful brown boy is laughing in the room down the hall eating caramel gelato and not cleaning his room and I want to not think about my dead brother every time the police kill another of us and then get to pose in front of flags and lie to the cameras like the truth don’t keep in blood and keep their guns and keep their public salaries and keep killing the people we love and when I think that I cry Again because I want to not cry because I actually hate crying because none of my tears can offer resurrection none of my poems can offer resurrection none of my image searches can offer resurrection and I want us to stay alive
Request: Permission to Occupy Your Body, Roger Reeves
From Within the Dark-Blood Depths, Rachel Eliza Griffiths
Other Outrages, Other Deaths, Rion Amilcar Scott
A Brief History of the Present, Morgan Parker
Rachel. Trayvon. Michael. Dying. Laughing. A. Fiction., Kiese Laymon
How Do You Write From a Country That Doesn’t Exist, Danielle Evans
Am I a Reliable Witness to My Own Life?, Sarah Labrie
Keyword Search: “Ferguson” and “Mike Brown”, Angela Flournoy
Slow Dance, With Bullet, Hope Wabuke
Breath of Fresh Air, Yahdon Israel
A Very Brief History of Police Killings in the U.S., Metta Sáma
