the tangy musk of human nature;
we adorn it so hypocritically,
can you see it?
when taboo vessels sway to and fro
tight in the maw of confederalism,
in a muzzle of southern gusts,
can you see?
onyx pendulums on guilty arms of wood,
let them twirl in a noose grip and droop vampirically,
and the marrow of their being drawn and suckled upon,
for lust of tortured black[cursed] wails,
[cursed]black misfortune,
black[cursed] death
can you see, now?
the black oblivion cut in the white sheets,
& thick bodies of rope that strangle the wrist
that suck the strength from the roots of the skin
can you see, now?
the sun shine n’ pierce the smog kicked up by them sheeted horses,
like a freshly drawn arrow of a determined archer,
and we stand, afraid n’ waitin’, hands bled,
& hope —
can the sun still shine on’na bronze skin
and rebeautify a scene so ugly & cursed[black]?
Header photograph © S. Schirl Smith.
e’carg; [ee-kar-jee] is an eighteen year old poet, musician, and activist born and raised on the south side of chicago. the ember between the chicagoan and poetry was first sparked when, as a boy, he drowned himself in a plethora of self-written/drawn ‘comic books’, the only thing to pacify him as he traveled state to state, struggled with social anxiety/depression at a young age, and the late incarceration of his father, all three things that he still credits today to be some of the primary reasons that he dived into writing.