This poem, Justice, was the winner of the national 2020 Joe Gouveia Outermost Poetry Contest, judged by poet Marge Piercy. (I was thrilled, needless to say!) Sadly, it remains timely.

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.