Winter Wears me Naked by Zachary Kluckman

I.

As much as I love their whispers
I cannot touch the trees today.

Jesse Washington. George Meadows. Emmett Till.

Their crooked fingers, naked in winter
like accusations of the nightmares
we have made them party to.

Today, I picture the bodies.
Hundreds of men and women killed by fear.
The thought of their lynchings
crawls under my skin and shivers
like a dying thing,
a small dog in the rain.

Does this make you uncomfortable

Let it.
In fact go deeper.

Imagine the knots that held them
slipped loose and down , around
your wrists, then pulled
until your pale, fish belly body
swung in the wind, imagine
your eyes as bird feeders for crows
your body, your bones
a secret left for the sun to expose
and maybe, finally,
touch the edge of what it means
to live in fear of your skin.

Stephen Watts. Tamir Rice. Michael Brown.

You’ve stopped asking us to do your dirty work
but you’re still killing them

They are shrieking through wind whistles.
Worse yet, they are right,
I don’t know what to say.

Racism is a conversation we need to have every day.
The sunken hollows where their eyes
used to be are an urgent punctuation.

Are you afraid? Do you have trouble
imagining yourself castrated and tied
to a cotton gin in the middle of a swamp.
There is a word for that.
Privilege. They are screaming. Privilege.

I am afraid that I am guilty as birds
for removing them from their bones.

II.

When Michael Brown was shot down
Officer Wilson took the privilege of watching him
bleed out, knowing his white skin
would protect him from prison,
then told a that Brown looked like a demon.

They tell me there is a war on,
in this country, against people of color.
I disagree.

In war there are survivors.

III.

When organized men armed with tactical gear
and training assault people of color in the streets,
this is not something as civilized as war, this
is genocide.

In war, both sides are fighting,
both armed and prepared for conflict,
in battle there has at least been
an open declaration of war.

There are no treaties here.
No peace talks or rules
for the treatment of prisoners.
Our nation’s young black men
and women are not given these considerations.
The police just kill them, and tell us
they looked like demons.

IV.

The Geneva convention(s) protects
prisoners of war from violence
to life and person, in particular
murder of all kinds,
assaults upon personal dignity,
passing sentence or carrying out executions.

Tell me how a child is shot ten times
and left to bleed in the street,
how prisoners of war are treated
with more dignity than our own citizens.
how a black man is killed
every 28 hours by the police,
tell me again how we are free.

Between murder and incarceration
tell me again how this country
does not keep slaves.

V.

I can not begin to understand what it means
to carry a target in your skin, as if
there were some genetic marker for murder,
to look at a tree and wonder how many
of your ancestors swung from its branches
at the end of a rope, what it means to live
in a country whose entire history
is built on the ashes of your kin,
on their blood, and their skin,

But I can refuse to repeat that history,
refuse to roll in those ashes,
I can speak truth, speak of trees
like Langston Hughes spoke of rivers.
I can promise the trees
I will never be silent again

VI.

This is my skin, like winter.
A tree cannot be blamed for the dirt
or the blood at its roots, but this skin
carries a history of violence, my silence
would only make me complicit

we must speak with our brothers and sisters
we must speak in a voice of thousands
until the killers are scattered

The time for resistance
is always.

Zachary Kluckman is a multi-award winning author, poet and spoken word artist recently named the 2014 Slam Artist of the Year at the National Poetry Awards. A two-time member of the Albuquerque National Poetry Slam team, and touring artist, he has performed across the nation, sharing the stage with many of the top artists in the world. His writing, performances and workshops around the world have earned him distinction, but at heart he is an activist, youth advocate and community organizer. In 2014 he received a Gold Medal award from the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards as a Teacher for his work with young writers. Zachary has written and edited several books, most recently, Some of It is Muscle (Swimming With Elephants Publications, 2014), Trigger Warning: Poetry Saved My Life anthology (Swimming With Elephants Publications, 2014), Animals In Our Flesh (Red Mountain Press, 2012). Read more about Zachary by clicking here.
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