The Warden at the Dinner Table
For Pamela Turner
On May 13, 2019, Officer Juan Delacruz fatally shot Pamela Turner, a resident of Baytown, Texas. In 2022, Delacruz was found not guilty despite evidence that he used excessive force in his interaction with Turner.
Turner was no stranger in her community. The police department and Delacruz knew her and still Delacruz engaged her as though she had no right to exist outside of her own home. There was an altercation, and video evidence shows that Turner seized Delacruz's taser and used it on him. In response, Delacruz murdered Turner. Delacruz wasn't fatally wounded, nor was he in any more danger than his training would have prepared him to de-escalate. But his job wasn't to de-escalate—it was to dominate and control. And so Turner ended up dead—all over misdemeanor warrants, in a police state where police violence against Black women is rarely documented and almost never leads to justice.
Her hair sit aunty-coded
Missy Finger Waves
I could slide my fingers through
and call her family
If I weren't looking
close enough
but we all kissing cousins,
ain't we
Gold hoop earrings
where your dreams jump through like double dutch
I can't help but see my momma
Her name is Pamela,
spelled like I can call her alphabet at the family reunion
and some of them folk
also too young to be ancestors
too young to be altar
food during
mourning fast
I remember mornings
stewing on some Baytown dust trail in '04 wondering how the devil
tricked my Daddy into moving us deep
off near them backwater
crypts and river sheds where
old slaves were abandoned
for the soul value
We found wells
in the forest of trailer parks
that lead us to lynching
posts and molested buffalos
Brother Wind told me what happened there and it happened to her
Her, who is she
who is we
who is her
& her to her mother, father,
sister,
cousin, neighbor,
neighbor
are we good neighbors
if her name only lives lavish on obituary font and not the work song
whistle of a hand gun
The police department said she wasn't pregnant like the jailhouse ain't the womb
of mistress death
Like we didn't hear those Buc-ee's branded boots march Sandra Bland from the
slavers ports of Galveston to Waller County Jail and say she spilled milk
when they found blood
in her cell
her
the world's insulted she
I went to Bland's wake
and prayed with whom she belongs
Pamela ain't belong nowhere
near this motherfucking poem
but here we are and there
she genocide breast and
Black woman cadaver sold for pity
the blood is still in Georgia Jackson's eyes
so who can feel safe at home
when the warden eats
at the dinner table
before we get to walk through the front door
Negroes With Guns
After Robert F. Williams
You are 40 inches long,
with a wood grained finish
The polish of an innocent thing
You are 8 pounds
with a black nose
and o' so nosy
You fit between
different fingers
for different reasons
Jimmy Jr snatches you up
with the tremble
of a boy trying to make weight like his daddy
Jimmy Sr picks you up
with lighter, sweatier
hands
Jimmy Sr wakes you
when he hears the leaves
dancing in the driveway
They usually follow creeping paws
Sometimes fox
Sometimes Mr. Charlie
Jimmy Jr likes to feed you in front
of Bobby, Sharon, and Dennis
to say something about how much older his dick is to they childishness
They pay him no mind
but you don't like to be handled like that
You don't like when the kids know you're awake
If you had it your way
you'd rather play around in their nature books
You don't like what comes out of your mouth
when either Jimmy forces you out
of your hiding place
But when there's work to do
you do your job
You keep the family safe
even if it's from inside the house
Berta had to turn you
on Jimmy Sr
a few times to bark her resistance
especially when he uses
the whiskey in your place
to find power in the spirits
You don't like it
but you do your job
You'd rather return your death parts to
the twists of the
Maple tree that had part in makin' you
If you had it your way
you'd rather not been made
You don't like it
but you do your job
You do your job
because these your people
and you a'int finna see them strung up by no klan
who use they arms to
tear up rooms far
more holy than the kitchen wallpaper you call hush harbor
holstered & heaving over a portrait Jesus
Your neighbor window like to tell you
when the coast is clear
for you to pray too
You don't like the secrecy
but you do your job
because for better or worse
these your people
For better or worse
they need you
Between Bronze and Bullshit
for Assata & Harriet
On September 7, 2022,
the Central Intelligence Agency
published quite the article:
Honoring Harriet Tubman:
A Symbol of Freedom and
an Intelligence Pioneer.
How strange.
Now Harriet
was a symbol of freedom, yes.
She wore her badges
on her feet—
bruises and bleeding
bunions,
spasms between her toes
from the long hauls,
covered by the angels which kept her
hydrated when clean water was in short supply.
Oh me, oh my—
what else I read?
Harriet was an intelligence pioneer, yes indeed. She learned the psalms of the forest
and discovered that foliage wanted us free before we did, aided by the wild plants
and oak trees,
deer and fox,
pointing their noses as to where to go,
and where to hide,
and when to run.
And by and by,
and ancestor by ancestor,
veil by veil,
she was passed down bayous and the news
of shallow brooks
that told her who'd been by and who'd been there,
and footprints that looked like paw prints,
that looked like bloodhounds,
that looked like not that way, Moses,
there's trouble afoot.
Oh me, oh my—
what else I read
as the article continues:
"Under the additional threat of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850,
and facing perilous conditions,
Tubman, working alongside the Underground Railroad,
applied sophisticated tradecraft, including the use of disguises,
clandestine communication, and assets and allies,
who provided safe houses, transportation, and funding for the operations."
Sounds familiar.
Like
Assata.
Like McNamara, consumed with her escape and her applied
sophisticated tradecraft, clandestine communication, and assets
and allies.
He wrote:
"Assata not only learned the names of government informants from the 1,700 pages of FBI information
about herself and the BLA, but went to the very
heart of the operations of the Bureau
and other enforcement agencies. She
learned our techniques; she learned
how to anticipate what we would do."
Sounds familiar—
like Harriet learning surveillance routes
and when fugitive slave ads were posted
so prior to
she'd know when to flee.
Like Assata with Mutulu and Sekou—
clandestine communication,
assets,
and allies.
Like William Still and Henry Gordon, B. N. Goines, and the Underground.
And the Underground.
Harriet was Underground,
but above ground now at Langley,
in front of the CIA headquarters,
is the 2,400-and-a-quarter-pound statue of Moses,
who most certainly is everything they say she is, though never for them.
And they know that.
But narrative is warfare, and
erected in all bronze—
brawn and bold,
curves carved
from the hilt of her dagger to her lantern— they've defanged the war resister
and claim her as their weapon.
The woman who wouldn't have hesitated to shoot Sidney Souers—
the first father of central intelligence— shoot him twice if he were a slave catcher, the predecessor
to the CIA.
They've claimed her as their weapon
and call her their greatest spy.
And the great irony is that if it were 1970, and not 1860 when Harriet was 'bout that action, she'd have been applying sophisticated tradecraft, including the use of disguises,
clandestine communication, and assets and allies, for the Black Liberation Army.
Don't get it twisted.
They want you to believe Harriet believed
in the mission of the Union.
But if the Union was the way to free the people, she made the principled decision to do so— much like she'd have been in that car,
I'm sure,
sitting next to Assata,
moving sister along to Havana.
Because Harriet was Underground.
Harriet was Black Liberation.
Now they say Harriet has a home at Langley. Can't you see?
Remember, we not supposed to—
'cause narrative is warfare.
And the way to make heroes of golliwogs
is a damn good story.
And what better story than a Black woman with a gun, especially if that gun has a bald eagle perched on its lever?
Leave it to them.
And by 2160,
they may fuck around and build a bust
of Assata inside the White House,
talking about the country's greatest ambassador in Cuba,
talking about an article
on the Homeland Security website reading:
Assata Shakur
A Symbol of Freedom, Arts, and American Ingenuity.
Believe you me—
somewhere between Martin Luther King Day and Juneteenth,
if it serves the crowns of capitalists
that need new bodies
who need new stories
to believe this country is anything more than a death cult
ridin' dirty
on the spokes of a war machine,
then believe you me:
if Harriet can take flight and still land at Langley, we better be prepared—
by oral history,
or pickaxe,
or both,
and by fire and by force—
to tear down the portraits of the Panthers in the parlors on Pennsylvania Avenue, and the plaque of Assata
outside the Pentagon,
as part of a DC tour for their brand-new, spit-shined,
funky,
fresh,
and co-opted heroes of freedom.