I can’t teach you to care for me, for her, for him, for them
There comes a time to realize compassion starts within
A state of caring equally for those who bleed the same
The mind plays tricks in phenotype, it’s us we have to blame
#SpreadTheWord

SuperBlackGirl
|
Editor’s note: This poem is part of our #SpreadTheWord poem of the week series, featuring work by Chicago artists based on Injustice Watch reporting. The poem was inspired by our ‘Essential Work’ series. For more poetry in this series, click here. Fly high super black girl. Being a black girl in America is like tiptoeing through a lion’s den with sliced achilles.
#SpreadTheWord

In it
|
Editor’s note: This poem is part of our #SpreadTheWord poem of the week series, featuring work by Chicago artists based on Injustice Watch reporting. The poem was inspired by our co-published article with The Triibe, ‘Analysis: Black Chicago youth are disenchanted by 2020 election options, but hope for a progressive future’. For more poetry in this series, click here. We’re all in this together
since
we’re all in this together
until
we’re all not in this together
because after
we’re not in this together… we will surely
fall
apart.
#SpreadTheWord

The Ideal World
|
Editor’s note: This poem is part of our #SpreadTheWord poem of the week series, featuring work by Chicago artists based on Injustice Watch reporting. The poem was inspired by the commentary, ‘Listen: Youth organizers discuss Black joy, West Side history and the future.’ For more poetry in this series, click here. It is not some café on the Mediterranean glittering in the sun, the ocean breezes of the spring, the smell of coffee,
it is not Yo-Yo Ma and Peter Serkin wordlessly letting us in on the intimate partly improvised conversation that is the sonata,
it is not the clamor and jabber of eighty thousand cranes after they have glided to a stop on the marshy lake, having plunged and swooped down in silent descent from the heavens,
nor the fear-filled bravery of those who face down the instruments of tyranny until the
opposing phalanxes dissipate in the clear air of morning,
nor the seemly colloquy of honest adversaries,
nor the bubble within which we cultivate kindness to our own,–
but a crowded bus on the way home from a demonstration and a child no older than three in her mother’s arms yelling the contagious chant, “The people demand social justice.”
Bernard Horn’s new collection of poems, Love’s Fingerprints, has been praised by Major Jackson, Carl Dennis, and Prageeta Sharma. His first collection, Our Daily Words, was a finalist for the 2011 Massachusetts Book Award in Poetry.
#SpreadTheWord

Know Your Rights When ICE Comes to Your Door
|
They will come to the door in broad daylight.
Because they can.
When the sun is high and shining, and Chicago summer feels like it will never end
They will wait in the street.
They will knock.
Commentary

History as a Poem Shaking my Hand
|
I sit on my balcony pretending I’m a parcel.
Here’s a postman as a boy cataloguing letters handling fires.
Sometimes we surprise ourselves.
Sometimes we make for ourselves.
#SpreadTheWord

I Wish to Live Alive, Not Just Survive
|
i used to wish that i was white
i wished to scrape the melanin off my skin
the hate the world wielded against my people
forged its way within