An honorable mention from the 2024 Bird in Your Hands Contest

the grieving

                Let the rage that says tear this shit down
                tear this shit down. – Tsitsi Ella Jaji

                  1. A STOREFRONT WINDOW

is shattered, but
isn’t everyone? didn’t the window hear
what happened to our lil’ boy,
see all that blood running
like it was water?
didn’t the window see
his hands up in the air like
he was reaching for god?
didn’t the window hear
the gunshot rattle heaven?
didn’t we all? didn’t we cry
so hard the sky fell & all our ghosts
came tumbling?

                  2. RIOT POLICE

you bless your bloodlust, your weapons
anointed: the gun, the baton & the badge.
you came for the war, but
this is the funeral
where everyone & they mama
throw themselves onto the city.
there be a thousand black aunties
over open caskets, pounding
pavement and screaming, sobbing,
screaming
lord, take me instead, take me.
it should’ve been me.

                  3. THE BRICKS

are red, same as the silt-clay and grit in us
children of the drowned.
We all float in the rivers of red that
bullet ripped out of the boy’s chest like
it was looking for a home,
almost rain-dancing in his ribs,
his barely thirteen bird chest bursting like
that white man was looking for rain.
We find him and bury him in the bricks that
same day, bash him open ‘till his empty
matches our hearts. But he is not bleeding,
this is not blood. We brought rain for the long drought,
for all the dark boys struck down
in the summer heat.

                  4. THE FLIPPED POLICE CAR

The metal beast, warped & once mighty, falls
so easily when two hands join four to join six,
then become a city. All the ancestors fell to earth & found
more dead, so we know now that
not even heaven could hold our grief.
We all ready to end this world tonight,
grasp at whatever good is left
to take with us into the next.

                  5. ONE BLACK BOY’S SUMMER

ended over ice cream
from the corner store.

                  6. NO REASON

to assume
his Spider-Man wallet was a gun,
his body, bulletproof. No
reason to assume
we’ve had our fill of grief.

the city laps up our blood
like it’s a cool drink
on a summer’s day.

---

Jaylin Jones is a Junior English major currently attending the University of Southern Mississippi. As a creative writer and student leader, they are always dedicated to giving a voice to the marginalized. Their work has been published in Product and the Sigma Tau Delta Rectangle. You can find them on Instagram @jayjones0281.