from The Black Bicycle
How many will be murdered
on these streets?
How many will be murdered
in their homes?
How many mothers weep
in the dark fighting off fear?
Mourning the loved
the tens of thousands
whose torsos become a spout
making a fountain of blood
shooting straight up
then spraying over us all
When mothers see their child
laying, they are used
to carefully looking for
the slightest sign of a breath
just one rise of the lungs
in the chest
they will stand there staring
as they did when their babies
were first born
carefully, quietly, patiently
looking for a breath
and slowly the terror
slips in – that it will not come
the terror that was always
ended before – with that small movement
the smallest rise in their chest.
You remember putting your hand
on them gently to feel the lungs fill.
On the slab, sometimes
they do not let you touch.
Sometimes, they do not even let
you in. The mothers must look behind a
small glass window with a small black
velvet curtain in a small dark room.
They weep
at the sight of their child on the slab
now the fountain’s reservoir.
Gallons at a time
for the fountain
32,250 gallons in 365 days.[1]
there is no
offseason
it does
not cease
there is no justice
there is no peace.
[1] Approximately 21,500 were murdered in 2020, every body has approximately 1.5 gallons of blood in it.
Aja Beech 