Warm Welcoming Fire Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio
remember the young men / vanishing remember America’s promise kept secret from their opened / disappearing hands
I cannot write another name / the once living body, sunken I cannot stand the weight, another brown boy is hanging / I cannot breathe this generation’s inheritance the choking stench of violence persists this accumulated death of the innocent so instead I watch as we take up the pens and signs throw our hands up the voices and prayer up we open our palms crying please
count the times we have witnessed the master’s call for massacre held our young and brown closer shielding our children from this wildfire of cold slaughter turned acquittal
Today we light this foundation that allows for the protection of the killing and the dishonor of the dying we burn with the skin and bones of our children black dead but not forgotten begging //
don’t shoot
what will change this country if not a young man shot porous his open palms’ broken promise his burial’s warm welcoming fire
// count the syllables and cities who home the buried who mourn the dead and dying whose breath is held still waiting for Justice
15
16