I’ll never know their names But I bear the signs of their pride The sacrifices The stains Which bore many gifts That led to my gains The phonetics and poetics of my name That map the linguistic trail of my bloodline Pieces and particulars Scattered and tarnished Woven together for the tapestry that is me Humble farmers Forced to migrate In waves of pain Among dangerous waves Of seas that swallowed Pieces of me, He, and she In salvation As we became those without a nation Stra

. Good Trouble I was fifteen in a small Alabama town when I first heard your name John Lewis, then Edmund Pettus Bridge. Their clubs cracked your bones. Their tear gas clogged your lungs. An iron pipe almost ended your life. But you stood up. You walked on for fifty years plus more, modeling resilience, leaving a trail of hope. When you died, the earth slowed. The sun dimmed The air thinned. The world would never be the same. Full smile, baritone voice. Gone. But we are not a

You’re looking past her avoiding her eyes, the eyes of the woman in the front line of the protest the one who reminds you of your mother or your mother in law or your grandmother or all of them together. You don’t need to look at her, don’t need to meet the challenge of her eyes, you have the power you have the choice to look past her. You can do anything so long as you don’t face her so long as you don’t cower you have the power. You know it when you collect your paycheck wh