buy Black; bye, Black lumpenproletariat
dear Black capitalist: us Black do not have
the dream ©
that has
jaded
you
empowered
you
to prattle on about
yours
many a Black have a dream:
a warming dream
with which to
wrench a superfluous dollar of its fixed, colorless teeth
to melt the last fascist’s golden badge and
unchain settlers’ doors for a country’s
vagabonds, luftmenschen.
whether if you or i are killed
by a liberal’s beauteous peace or a conservative’s right mindedness
we’re still dead by the bureaucratic tongues of our
neighbors impending, afar
so, if you’re going to sanction space
from this stolen terrain, snidely cherry-picking who matters and what will save us
Black masses, it certainly won’t be by your means.
i think that while you deserve praise, the materials
which fashion that praise languishes on episodic
shortcomings of us Other
when you flex, fabricating
Black excellence™ because you’re in the dream ©
and we’re surviving through a gutter, i ask you:
how might capitalism slyly murder us —
yet you refer to us as kindred? sister? brother?
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Patrick Jonathan Derilus is an American-born Haitian independent writer and Goodreads author who resides in Brooklyn, New York. Their pronouns are he, him, his, or they, them, theirs. They write poetry, short stories, and essays. They are published in RaceBaitR, Rabble Literature Magazine, Cutlines Press Magazine, Linden Avenue Literature Magazine, and elsewhere. They are the author of their 2016 anthological work, Thriving Fire: Musings of A Poet’s Odyssey and newest ebook, Perennial: a collection of letters.
