the back of the bus

In case you didn't know, Friday, May 3, was the anniversary of the day that Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus in Birmingham, Alabama. It was a revolutionary refusal and one that sparked the fire of peaceful protest within the oppressed throughout the nation. The fight against racism has been one of my passions for as long as I can remember, and I wouldn't even exist as a person if the Civil Rights movement hadn't happened. On Friday our English class (finally) did a poetry writing assignment in which we received a list of all of the major words in Sylvia Plath's "The Applicant". Of course, my poem turned into a poem about racism and injustice. Here it is.

Bad black boy.

Brace yourself, black boy.

Bury yourself in bombs, black boy.

They don't care if you're crying, black boy.

They want you to dissolve, black boy.

Your emptiness is everywhere, black boy.

You are neither silver nor gold, black boy.

You are a headache, black boy.

You are a shatterproof, waterproof bunch of holes, black boy.

They do not notice if you are missing, black boy.

They fill your space with rubber soles, black boy.

They will collect your teeth and feed them to the dogs, black boy.

There are fifty of you, black boy.

You are nothing at all, black boy.

You were created wrong, black boy.

They want you to be right, black boy.

They want you to be gone, black boy.

They want you to give up the fight, black boy.

They want you to be white, black boy.

There is nothing you can do, black boy.


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