Theater of America

I want to give you the silence of snow and let it melt

into you. I want to take your name and skywrite it

in permanent marker, then let the rain tattoo you everywhere.

This is what to do with black bodies. In the theater of America,

fire sprinklers are covering everything in shallow pools.

I want to give you a monsoon instead—it’s the safest waters

where most drown.

In the theater of America there are none so blind

as those who will not see color. They fill the aisles,

tongues wrapped in Gadsden flags. This is what they do

with black bodies: fill them with lead, let them fall,

let them sink, let them float in thin puddles. Even if

I could crush this theater inside my fist, I would

feel the small hammering of people rebuilding already.

And what is left of you? What about black bodies?

Your home is the rock of Sisyphus; your story is a book

the blinded are placing on a shelf in a library they have

never been to; yours is the prodigal play in which black

sons do not return home. Your body rests on the apron

of the stage. And somewhere in the mezzanine I hear a whisper

sailing like fishing line over still water: Blackness is always

And from the rafters an echo: Blackness is always knowing