by KELLY ZEN-YIE TSAI
“On Saturday [July 20], 100 cities held rallies organized by the National Action Network for Trayvon Martin, where large crowds demanded a federal civil rights investigation into the fatal shooting of the unarmed teen. “Trayvon could have been anyone’s child,” Trayvon’s father, Tracy Martin, said at a rally in Miami. “That’s the message that’s being sent to the world.” Celebrities, lawmakers, and religious leaders also joined the rallies on Saturday, which follow a series of largely peaceful protests since George Zimmerman’s verdict.” In the above photo, people protest outside the New York Police Department (NYPD) in New York City. PHOTO/TEXT/Think Progress/@rdevro
there is no hoodie
there is no pack of Skittles
there is no Arizona Iced Tea
there is no NBA game
there is no police call
let’s go to something before then
are people destined to meet in time
tragedies laid out like sidewalk cracks
supreme maker, do you taunt us to step on them,
break our mother’s backs
there is no boy laying dead on the ground
there are no profile pictures, glowering digital eyes
there are no blog posts
there is no jury
there is no scream
there is no evidence
there’s a boy watching television,
who decides to go to the store
there’s a man on neighborhood watch,
gun loaded in his waistband
tell me supreme maker
are our destinies happening
spinning out
from under our thumbs
do we have control over anything
everything
there are no protests
there are no debates on Facebook walls
there is no President sharing his lamentation then closing his mouth
there is no family mourning their child
there is every family mourning their child
there is no family mourning the death of their child
there is every family mourning the death of their child
in a daze
the family does the talk show circuit
sits with the handler
who picks out their new clothes
tim’s or boat shoes
what’s the look for grief this year
how do we stop the happening from happening
the seamless excision
we didn’t even know this was going to occur
all the lives saved
we didn’t even know this was going to occur
there is no boy
his legacy now digitized
copied ad infinitum
pixels upon pixels of his stare
Kelly Tsai’s website is Yellow Gurl