The Two Percent

The Two Percent

Sadistic sociopath
Streets and alleys bleed
across my adopted country
The Black man can't breathe

Centuries of slavery
make the blood run
bouncing over jagged rocks
I feel its legacy
in every Black pulse
people now assumed free
The rough run of fluid in veins
traumatized for generations

My Appalachian heart
distilled in the North country,
running from the violence
nurtured on Assassin's Hill
A successful white immigrant
brought down by comorbidities
of profound injury

My pulse is choppy too,
the imprint of torture and murder
resonating in the flow

One American son moving
corporate mountains
to heal the heritage of
Satanists and Nazis

The other hand in hand
with his love,
where I could not be,
wearing a gas mask,
shot by rubber bullets,
no lost eyes
Left his gun at home
and walked peacefully through
the hemorrhaging streets
because he is a patriot
without a leader
these long years
I live without sleep

I am the granddaughter 
of this man
riveted
by the face of suffering 
increasing and decreasing
pressure
alternately
on MY neck,
watching life
fade in and out
until the policeman,
his brotherhood's two percent,
was ready to
end the game
and see us ALL die

Crying to his mother waiting
on the other side
Adieu to children here 
A torturer's focused face
A limp body

Family terrified into
complacency

- Celia Quinn