Welfare Check East of Downtown

By Christie Valentin-Bati

“It is 2020. Everything is canceled except for police terror.”
–Nick Estes

 

They said close down everything
non-essential: The coffee shop,
blue trimmed with a green porch,
white-potted flowers that hung down
from the awning,
closed – so I roasted my own coffee.
The outlet mall
with high-waisted jeans,
gold-plated, pearl earrings
I’d been saving up to buy
closed too. So I wore nothing
in my ears, dug deep into my closet
and cut my own shorts instead.
They told me to stay home. I stayed home.
I used Instacart. I worked remotely.
I bought surcharged surgical masks off Amazon
though I knew, it wouldn’t help much
to block the droplets should they come.
Still, I was young, white.
I washed my hands regularly,
soaping around the thumb,
between the fingers,
even around my wrists,
I scrubbed clean.
I sexted, watered the plants,
and when I tired, I turned on the TV,
watched the news do its count
of another thousand people dead,
which meant only 100,000
were left to die.
Every now and again
I would peak over the fence,
happy to see my neighborhood
silent and unmoving,
the cars parked, quiet, in the driveways.
If any noise ever did pass through,
a construction truck, police sirens,
I’d pull down my windows
to mute out the sound,
certain that the noise was headed
to another place. I never worried
about any strangers in uniforms
coming to knock on my door,
carrying with them
something more deadly than a virus.

 


Christie Valentin-Bati is a poet and photographer based in small-life suburbia Hollywood, Florida, and soon big city Chicago. She is a co-author of Existential Quandary, a book of haikus from the perspective of a chicken, and her poetry has been featured in Columbia Journal. More of her work can be found on Instagram @_christieos_, Twitter @christiee0_0 or her website christievalentinbati.com.

Photo credit: Alachua County via a Creative Commons license.

White Privilege, This Is America

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Through African-American Eyes

By Conney D. Williams

 

conneyjacketI didn’t sit down to write all of this, but here I am. The election seems like a dream, but I’m not one of those caught off guard. I don’t see it as such a surprise. As an African American, this is the normal America I’ve seen my entire life. Although the mindset the election reflects had been underground, more covert, this segment of society no longer wants to hold it all in or swallow the medicine of “change” or “inclusiveness.”

I don’t see the country any differently now than I have for the sixty years I’ve been alive. Those of us who have been fighting this fight can’t be caught unaware, can’t be blindsided by a national election.

Donald Trump has tapped into the colonial spirit of America, the Manifest Destiny that decimated complete tribes of Native Americans. Recently celebrated Thanksgiving is the epitome of America’s character and heart. When the Native Americans were trying to find ways to assist struggling colonists, the colonists were planning how they could take their land and crops. As the Native Americans were offering food and thanks, the colonists were offering infected blankets.

Donald Trump’s promises are the same.

Tell me when America was ever great. America loves the idea of looking great, but this is only done through smoke and mirrors, through imposing its will upon others who have less might. When has America kept her promise to be one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all? When have the marginalized segments of society not known a life of marginalization or murder or systematic policies designed to keep individuals at bay and real liberty out of reach? How about a time when those who have been marginalized have been able to walk up to Washington and cash the check called Freedom?

I am not surprised Donald Trump is the president-elect of this country. Didn’t the births of Black Lives Matter and other significant groups of historically disenfranchised peoples happen during Barack Obama’s presidency? Didn’t we see the repeated revelation that Black people are still the target of state-sponsored lynchings and incarceration/slavery during the Obama presidency? What really changed because there was an African-American family occupying the White House?

All I’ve known my entire life has been to fight vehemently for my inalienable rights as a citizen of the United States, yet everywhere in America, I have been denied access to what is mine from birth. What has been promised to all remains reserved for those whose skin color is fairer than mine, for those who feel their rights have been diminished by those whose skin color is closer to mine. How fucking ridiculous is that? How has white privilege been diminished in America? When has white privilege not assumed all the resources of this country as its own?

Whenever the disenfranchised want more than crumbs that fall from the table of white privilege, it’s called “reverse discrimination” or we must “make America great again”—and we all know what that entails.

The “core values” of the America I know don’t serve those who have been disenfranchised their entire human existence; they serve white privilege.

And white privilege doesn’t want to be uncomfortable in any way. But inclusiveness and change require that white privilege be discomforted. And, We the Disenfranchised, know that that is not something white privilege is ready to embrace.

……………………………………………………….

Conney D. Williams is a poet, actor and performance artist, originally from Shreveport, Louisiana, where he worked as a radio personality. Conney’s first collection of poetry, Leaves of Spilled Spirit from an Untamed Poet, was published in 2002. His poetry has also been published in various journals and anthologies including Voices from Leimert Park; America: At the End of the Day; and The Drumming Between Us. His collection Blues Red Soul Falsetto was published in December 2012, and he has released two new poetry CDs, Unsettled Water and River&Moan, available on his website.

Reading recommendation: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora N. Hurston.

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