Justice

This poem won the Outermost Poetry Contest judged by Marge Piercy.

The planes flew into Manhattan and the white people asked,
why us?
We thought we were safe.
Living in the luxury of that delusion, we baked Disneyland cakes
and God wore the red, white, and blue; our anger when proven wrong
was so immense it engulfed
two countries and killed hundreds of thousands; but that

is another story: this one is about those who never had the luxury of
thinking they were safe, who knew that terrorism
didn’t come to this country
on the wings of hijacked airplanes:

            Ask those who watched the churches burning.
            Ask those who grieved their children murdered.
            Ask those swinging from Southern trees.
            Shot on dark country roads.

And the churches burned.

The planes flew into Manhattan and the white people asked,
why us?
We are Roy Rogers and Jimmy Stewart, and Tinkerbell
sparkles dreamdust on our suburban homes while Black men
live on death rows skewed by hatred: not
greater crimes, just greater punishment
We still are always in the right.

And the churches burned.

The planes flew into Manhattan, and the white people asked,
why us?
Even though we cross to the other side of the street
when the person coming toward us is Black, we still
proclaim the moral high ground and sing the national anthem
our hands over our hearts, our hearts narrowed by years of
bigotry and the smug assertion that we did not personally

            run the slave ships
            own the plantations
            whip the human flesh.
            It was someone else in another

time, we say.

And the churches burned.

The planes flew into Manhattan and the white people asked,
why us?
We are trophy houses and trophy wives and workout
clubs that underline our privilege:
we don’t see the tired Black woman
at the bus stop, the weariness in the stoop of her
shoulders, the desperate need to survive in a country that
denies her everything it hands out to others.

And the churches burned.

The planes flew into Manhattan and the white people asked,
why us?
We are dark southern roads and strong southern branches,
we are police with fingers tightening on triggers
our knees on necks,
we are a language of hopelessness that swirls in the smoke
of a thousand crack pipes while we make bland assertions that
all men are created equal.

And the churches burned
To decide that no church shall burn again:
Some call this justice.