I resent the ones that can't tell an errant glance from a second look
And the time it takes to slap your ass back to the monkey's path
I resent the nit I'm made to pick with a dead prick
And the shotgun your mom slept with when I wasn't there
Like the Mossberg you used when you made your last decision
She could have sold it had you been a better coward
Instead of the kind you were when your finger found the trigger
Did you feel like a man made to bloom like a Kodiak sun
Angry at the sky and preemptively proud

Tell You
Written by Kelly Ann Wilson

I never got to go to Portugal
The next place on my list
So, book that flight
And get on the jet plane

I never got to realize the career
I could have built for myself
And seen what I was truly capable of
So, apply for that job you think
Is out of your league

I never made it to my first day of classes
Or to walk across the stage to graduate
So, live so big and make some memories
In that college town

Juneteenth hint: three hundred
and sixty six days
after eighteen sixty four.

Major General Gordon Granger
led the Union Soldiers to Galveston, Texas,
to announce the end of the Civil war
and the freedom of all enslaved people.

Jim Crow sat perched
over the event horizon
waiting in the wings,
which brought darkened
(non-sheltering) skies
not only for the hot pocket
of suddenly emancipated
persons of color,
who would subsequently experience
immense prejudice
upon their embarkation

Silence, my loyal companion, enfolds me
in the embrace of solitude’s sanctuary,
where words dare not tread, forsaking her.
With vacant eyes, she wields a brush
and paints a portrait of the deity forlorn,
narrating tales without the need for speech.
In unity, we share laughter that reverberates,
its echoes resonating in our weathered bones,
like a distant memory of mirth,
amidst a chamber adorned with shattered fragments.