This past Sunday, we installed 40+ “Black Lives Matter in Glen Echo” yard signs in the Glen Echo neighborhood. This restores the neighborhood to somewhere close to the number of BLM signs here before they were all stolen. This exercise was for recording for our docu-poetry short, “Target Practice”.
I’ll let the poem say the rest.
TARGET PRACTICE
During George Floyd Summer
Blacks Lives Matter signs were planted in Glen Echo
with almost the frequency of spring bulbs.
Diversity and inclusion wafted on the summer breeze.
Refreshing.
Inviting.
Chasing the burnt stench of yesterday,
the sweet scent of tomorrow
made cliches like sweet scents on a summer breeze fresh again.
I tried to write a poem
but every metaphor eventually failed
except target.
And that was not
the poem I wanted to write.
Then came the night rider.
He rode a black pikkkup with a silver blaze
(and an extended kab with a rear window that opens).
He hid his face in maskkk and kowl.
He did no lynching.
No rape.
No arson.
He stole our signs.
He crept into our yards
onto our porches
into our minds.
He stole through our neighborhood
trampling our garden of tolerance.
He stole our speech.
He pillaged our thoughts.
He stole
Our voices.
Ancestral fear and ancestral pride
rise fighting in my chest.
My shoulders square against the weakness in my knees.
The pogroms of Rosewood and East Saint Louis, Rock City and Ludlow
lurk in my nerves twitching fight and flight.
New signs are replanted
in more protected locations.
Each new sign is a new target,
a new chance of escalating loss,
and few take the risk.
It’s just a sign
some say.
It’s just graffiti
when a house is defaced with vileness.
It’s just a window.
It’s just a house.
It’s just a (insert target/face here).
