Kelly (2015)

My boss, Kelly, is yelling at the kids again.

She is white again.

She paused the DVD to explain big words

to explain Freedom Summer.

Billy and Jack hate movies,

they say adults use them as pacifiers,

Lian is asleep.

My boss is frustrated,

saying she doesn't understand

why the five year olds

don't care about the civil rights documentary,

she doesn't understand why they'd rather color

than talk about colored only water fountains.

Watch children their age

getting hit by hoses in Birmingham.

Children their age in jail,

singing songs of freedom with bloody knees and bruises.

With a respectable, nice, white lady.

I tell her:

What you're seeing right now, Kelly,

is instinct sending messages to fingertips,

to draw coping in the form of houses

they can not live in.

You're seeing blood rush

to eyelids keeping them closed.

You're talking to small bodies

with generations of trauma

and wondering why they are not being triggered

in the way you would like,

Why bodies are fleeing and breaking down.

She screams “why don’t they care about this” upset,

like she’s are a hero for showing up.

A hero for being a good “feminist,”

a hero for working here, of all places.

I tell her:

At five they don't need to be told what racism looks like.

They are very aware of the monster under their bed.

It's the same one they watch

follow their parents out of the house every morning,

the same one that can’t pick them up at 3pm

it's the same one caught

in their throats in public school classrooms.

The monster is the same one

that won’t let Billy play outside anymore.

The one that labels Black and Brown children

as dangerous.

The monster judges Jerlicia by her name,

Okeoghene by his accent.

It already decided their fate prison or college.

The monster

is the same one that drove Anderson out of Guatemala

that drove the Carter’s out of the south

-remember that those are slave masters names.

I ask her:

Do you remember that you have a slave masters name

and they can see it on your face.

That you are afraid

That you scream when you’re afraid

This should not new for you Kelly,

You have worked in classrooms before.

I say, “my kids know, exactly what's going on.”

Birmingham is not over,

they have not stopped opening hoses on children.

Ferguson is not over,

they have not stopped opening bullets on children.

The Mexican border is not over,

they have not stopped building fences on children.

Freedom summer doesn’t end when the dvd does.

At the end of the day,

when the last child gets picked up,

you get to leave this side of town,

leave all of this behind,

they do not.