This is Why People Burning Down Fast Food Joints and Whatnot

Q. How do others sin against you?

A. By cursing me—telling lies about me—or striking me.
Q. What must you do to those who thus sin against you?
A. I must forgive them. *

See, I learned my catechism well.
Learned to offer my cloak and coat, my cheek
again and again as the skin was splayed
from my body. I can quote
Martin Luther King Jr. with ease,
praise the Americana of his martyrdom,
the sweet, unselfish beauty of that bullet’s velocity.
Shall I sing “We Shall Overcome” while
I swing? I have wanted so long
to believe in justice, to think of each blow
as recompense for my wickedness.
How can I continue?
How can I continue?
How can I continue
to take and eat this image
of myself, choke on the eloquence
of my dissent, speak love fluently
to someone with his knee
on my neck, his bullet in my child?


*A Catechism, to Be Taught Orally to Those Who Cannot Read; Designed Especially for the Instruction of the Slaves in the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Confederate States.↩︎


--Jacqueline Allen Trimble, Alabaman African American poet, scholar, professor of English and chair of the Department of Languages at Alabama State University, from Poetry magazine, July/August 2021.