“Dandelions bare art of
endurance”
—Semaj Brown,
First Poet Laureate of Flint, Michigan,
i
4 injured, 1 killed, across from a church surrounded by endless fence and on the other side of the fence concrete and on the other side of the church more concrete with piles of rubble fenced off and empty parking spots overgrown with crushed weeds and church windows you can’t see into and 120 air quality Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups and a NOTICE WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR VEHICLES OR PERSONAL ITEMS on the wall of the building that’s painted pure black jet black onyx black charcoal black the entire building black and the white-silver moon in the sky cut in half in the smog sky and crickets crickets crickets mixed with distant traffic and the losing wind and the wall is black every bit of it black with black wall and black garbage can with a full black plastic bag and a big black bucket near the painted black front door with thick white-silver locks thick locks and a gated door and no one to ask questions to nobody no bodies nothing just crickets and clouds and lights of the church and distant loud-soft traffic and a train warns its arrival somewhere on the horizon green overtaking the white-silver concrete and a telephone wire swings in the wind lazily and someone was killed here right here a long thin orange construction cone leans against the fence like it’s having a smoke and the wind and the crickets and there is no one anywhere and you feel the sin of corporate decay and the sick concrete clouds and the desperate crickets
ii
down the street an absolutely massive sign for LEGACY FUNERAL CHAPEL
iii
and before leaving
a security guard
alone
in a white car
on the other side
of a fence
and I pull over
and I walk up
to the fence
and he gets out
and walks up
to the fence
and we talk
through the fence
and he’s in white-
silver uniform
and he’s white
and it’s a black
neighborhood
and he’s white
and I ask him
if he knows
about the mass
shooting
and he says,
“I can’t speak
to any journalists
or lawyers”
and I tell him
I’m not trying
to solve a murder.
I’m trying to
solve Murder.
I don’t say that.
I think that.
I’m trying to
understand
why there’s so
much violence.
I say that.
I tell him
he doesn’t have
to talk about
the murder,
but can just talk
about how we
lessen the violence,
as a human,
how do we lessen
the violence
and he says,
“I’m not allowed
to comment”
and he’s robotic
and white and
I tell him how
when I’ve talked
with white people
in the black neighbor-
hoods where
the shootings
are taking place,
the white people
are corporate
and tell me
they’re corporate
and tell me
they can’t speak,
that I need to speak
to the police,
and I tell him
that the black people
I talk with
talk
because
they’re invested
in helping their
community
and I ask him
if the white people
who are corporate
aren’t invested
in black communities
and so that’s why
they have nothing
to say
and he walks away
silently
and gets in his
white security
vehicle
and drives away
and he is protecting—
seriously?—
what looks like
a thousand white
vans
all in rows
in a fenced in
parking lot,
all of these
white white white
vans, a comical
amount of white
vans
that he’s protecting,
and he fades away
into the night
and I look at him
fading
through the fence
that seems to be
everywhere
and how it protects
nothing
Ron Riekki co-edited Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice.
