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. This poem was inspired by our reporting, As cops’ versions of shootings contested, City pays millions and Beat, shoot or abuse someone? No jail for Chicago cops. For more poetry in this series, click here.
Danielle Maya Banks
You asphyxiate
My Capacity
Wear thin,
My Morality
Deny
Deny
Deny
Me, Humanity
How, then?
have you “missed” the silken thread?
Iridescent,
as it glitters beneath a burning sun:
Investigations that expose, influence and inform. Emailed directly to you.
Our carousel to the Heavens
Because
to be Black
and Alive
is to be awaiting
Ascent
————Unfree
Danielle Maya Banks is a journalist, creative writer, and advocate for the elusive equality that our nation claims to pursue. In the age of the pandemic occurring alongside our racial reckoning, Danielle uses her pen to speak out against these injustices, drawing her peers’ gaze to the urgency of our current demand for an equitable society. In the age of Covid-19, she believes, our lacking compassion and individualist approach to life and politics has proven deadly, as it has been since 1619.
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