What Gnaws My Bone
By Ronda Broatch
“Hopefully, George is looking down right now and saying this is a great thing that’s happening for our country,” Mr. Trump said. “This is a great day for him, it’s a great day for everybody. This is a great day for everybody. This is a great, great day in terms of equality.” – New York Times 5 June 2020
There are days that ache
so loud.
I see from a distance
a black man deprived
of the rest of his life
because : :
he fits the description, is a person
of interest
Sometimes the poem is not ready to be written.
Sometimes I need to just shut up and listen.
“Please, I can’t breathe.”
Sometimes I’m driving alone in my car yelling
Whose fucking great day is this?
(the president)
(who has no decent bone in his body)
(can’t hear me)
And how detached
his words
. . . looking down right now
and saying this is a great thing
that’s happening for our country . . .
how disembodied Floyd’s words
“My stomach hurts.”
“My neck hurts.”
“Everything hurts.”
I fog up my windows, yell NO NO NO
it’s Fucking. Never. A. Great. Day.
to be dead —
“They’re going to kill me.”
and how disconnected
I am in my green garden
paradise, my adult children
here with me,
and no one worried about going out
into the world, save for COVID-19
which doesn’t discriminate
from my little patch of privilege
I see
from a distance
the fires the broken glass the rubber bullets the flash bang the water
They’re going to kill me.
and milk to douse the sting. These facts
(They’re going to kill me)
gnaw
and gnaw and gnaw and gnaw —
Poet and photographer Ronda Piszk Broatch is the author of Lake of Fallen Constellations (MoonPath Press, 2015). Ronda was a finalist for the Four Way Books Prize, and her poems have been nominated several times for the Pushcart Prize. Her journal publications include Blackbird, Prairie Schooner, Sycamore Review, Mid-American Review, Puerto del Sol, and Public Radio KUOW’s All Things Considered, among others.