Black History Month, Poetry Edition

Speak Now, Or Forever. Hold Your Peace.
~Patricia Smith

Two weeks after 17 students were gunned down in Parkland, Fla., hundreds of worshippers clutching AR-15s slurped holy wine and exchanged or renewed wedding vows in a commitment ceremony at the World Peace and Unification Sanctuary in Newfoundland, Pa.

Draped in thick silk the hue of hemorrhage and bone, you fondle your butt stocks, muffled lust needles your cheeks. Your aim? To
make America great. Again,

your terse-lipped Lord has nudged you into the glare—numbed and witless in His name, you preen and re-glue blessed unions,
mistake America straight, contend

your unloosed crave for the sugared heat of triggers. Besotted beneath
your crowns of unspent shells, you hard-rhyme vows and
quake, aware of that weight again,

the gawky, feral gush of fetish. Every uncocked groom and rigid bride is greased and un-tongued, struck dumb by what’s at
stake. A miracle waits. You men

and women kaboom your hearts with skewered Spam and searing pink Walmart wine, graze idly on ammo and blood-frosted
cake. A prayer is the bait. Amen

woos guests in their ball gowns and bird suits, hallows your blind
obsession with your incendiary intended. Though you’ve
faked America, hate upends

all this odd holy—its frayed altars, fumbled psalms, assault rifles chic in itty veils. And we marvel at this
outbreak, bewaring that gate again,

left unlatched so this bright foolish can flow through. This ilk of stupid blares blue enough to rouse ancestors—y’all ’bout to
make Amiri berate again,

’bout to conjure Fannie Lou and her tree-trunk wrists. While you snot-weep, caress mute carbines, wed your unfathomable
ache, America waits. ’Cause when

the sacrament cools, and the moon is pocked with giggling, who’ll fall naked first, whose shuddering tongue will dare the barrel? Take that dare. Consummate. And then,

whose blood will that be?