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| Sunday night at Linn Park in downtown Birmingham, Alabama, a crowd took down the city of Birmingham's Confederate monument. Photo tweeted by Daniel Uhlfelder. |
our deepest thoughts and prayers are with you
for the terrible loss you must be feeling. but
what was it doing in that part of town, so far away
from its own kind? didn’t it know, wasn’t it raised
better? (poor thing probably had a father in prison,
a mother on welfare, like so many of your people).
honestly though, it should have just followed the law,
not been out there on the street corner, glorifying thugs
of a bygone era (with all their violent music and chanting).
it’s un-American. it should have known its place,
known when to keep its mouth shut. but it wouldn’t stop
resisting. and I heard it had a weapon. it only got
what was coming to it. they had no choice, were only
doing their jobs. we should consider how they feel:
all lives matter. but it is a tragedy—no community
should watch a thing crushed to death like that while
children looked on. but the sad truth is it was well
past its prime and had an underlying health condition.
MEH is Matthew E. Henry, a multiple Pushcart and Best of the Net nominated poet. The author of Teaching While Black (Main Street Rag, 2020), his recent works are appearing or forthcoming in Baltimore Review, Bryant Literary Review, Massachusetts Review, Ploughshares, Poemeleon, The Radical Teacher, Rejection Lit, The Revolution (Relaunch), Solstice, and Spiritus. MEH is an educator who received his MFA from Seattle Pacific University, yet continued to spend money he didn’t have completing an MA in theology and a PhD in education.