2nd Place Poetry 2017 Summer Contest This is a beautifully constructed poem—a thoughtful elegy for those slaughtered by police brutality, as well as an imagined future for the fatherless victims of racial violence. Both tribute and warning, the poem centers on the daughter of Philando Castile as hope, as avenger. The poem soars, using masterful imagery and powerful self-examination to scorch against the fixed stars of these vile historical and reoccurring wounds. Safiya Sinclair
Her word will land in you Alana de Hinojosa
after Philando Castile
When she comes for us, bearing that supple midwest july closing at dusk, first the fire & then the flies, nightfall’s curly goat fur after a haircut like her father’s, seven silver fish strapped with wire to her Falcon breasts, let us recall what we did when we heard her child voice, her mother’s anguished sir, sir, sir, when we saw the video of her father, & the officer’s brown, familiar hands gloved in ivory. I know us: we cling to the light we both love & distrust, gulp sweet honeysuckles while we hunt the night so we may hang it on our walls, betraying you & you & her repeatedly, the blaze of it all hovering between us above our crow & pigeon faces body full of fear, body full of ojalá que the river whose dark hands midwife our children entering this cruel, possible world will encounter something different.
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