Uncivil

I don’t know who my great-great-grand-
mother was, but I know she would tell me
to stop crying, don’t run away, respect
what the devil says, reciting Bible
parables of masters and slaves. She’d have
my last name, which is a last name that means
uncivil, primitive, African. Yes,
this is all I know when I’m touching on
where I came from. When I look at the dead
Auschwitz, alive White House, I see the end
of a process, names switched senseless, chambered
rounds, bullets in a slave’s back, death camps curved
like the upwards vogue of a devil, then
downward—but upward, then yes, we heard you,
here’s how that anti-semitic song isn’t,
here’s how the lynch-loving woman meant it.

Header photograph © Melanie Faith.