Monday, June 1, 2020

George Floyd

Did anyone sleep last night? Not sure. I didn't. I went to sleep with images of my beloved DC burning and kept thinking about how we've had so many years to end racism in this country - and we don't. We just keep trucking along and acting as if it will heal itself.

We don't consume a lot of news in our home via radio or TV, particularly when Helen and Connor are awake. But they have phones and computers and friends. Still, it took me a little off guard when I mentioned something to Ed and as I reached for the name, Helen filled in "Floyd". Although I knew Connor was an avid consumer of news, I didn't realize Helen was as well.

The juxtaposition of the two of them sleeping in the backyard last night with the dog where it's pretty quiet and safe with DC being torn apart a few miles away was unsettling. And while I do seek to make my children feel safe, particularly in this time when there is not enough known about coronavirus / COVID-19,  maybe they feel a little too comfortable?

I WOULD SWING
by Kelly Corrigan
If you took my husband away from me
Just because, say, he had blue eyes
Or a hairline you found objectionable
Or maybe because you didn’t like the cyst
that waxes and wanes
On his back
I would not make a poster
Or write an op ed
I would buy a sledge hammer
I would swing it into plate glass
Until I could make you feel
As endangered and disposable
As I felt.
I would need you,
As all people do,
To feel how I felt.
I would need to see you sit up,
Pull yourself out of a dream
Into a worse reality,
Saying
Will my neck be broken next?
Will my true love be made still
Under the knee
Of a righteous man
Who has all the rights I don’t
And knows it?
If you screamed into your iPhone
That my husband and his heritage
As a European-American
was assaulting you
By suggesting your dog
Needed a leash in the park
That was all of ours
I would not be polite in my response
I would not find a lawyer
And wait patiently for an “authority”
To maybe side with me.
Physical madness, if you ask me,
Is the most natural and understandable reaction.
Unproductive, sure.
Counter productive, yes of course,
But natural and understandable.
I know this in my body and your body knows it too.
Put your blue eyed husband
Under the knee of a public “servant”
for nine minutes
and when his heart stops forever
you tell me if you reach for a magic marker,
your laptop
or a sledge hammer

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