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This is poem #16 for the November Poem-A-Day challenge. The prompt was to write a “stacking” or “unstacking” poem. I struggled with it until this evening when I was re-watching Unforgivable Blackness – The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson
Weight
(for Jack Johnson)
in this pile are:
nearly one million gallons of African blood
enough wood to put a COLORED sign on every water fountain
with enough trees left over to hang those three-quarter people from
ten thousand or ten times ten thousand children ripped from their mothers
blood snap of the leather whip on the backs of who knows how many
no one knows how many becaue no one bothered to count
and I ask you:
what does this pile weigh?
and who is strong enough to lift it?
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