Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience – Shantell Antoinette

As the incoming administration builds its agenda of attack on marginalized people, on freedom of speech, on the earth itself, poetry will continue to be an essential voice of resistance. Poets will speak out in solidarity, united against hatred, systemic oppression, and violence and for justice, beauty, and community.

In this spirit, Split This Rock is offering its blog as a Virtual Open Mic. For the rest of this frightening month, January of 2017, we invite you to send us poems of resistance, power, and resilience.

We will post every poem we receive unless it is offensive (containing language that is derogatory toward marginalized groups, that belittles, uses hurtful stereotypes, etc.). After the Virtual Open Mic closes, we hope to print out and mail all of the poems to the White House.

For guidelines on how to submit poems for this call, visit the Call for Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience blog post. 

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Stolen Innocence
by Shantell Antoinette

My son just celebrated his 13^th birthday

That’s one year older than Tamir

To me they favor

And that makes me afraid

Because my son suffers from an invisible disability

That paints a target

On his head, back and chest

I don’t feel safe here

For him, it’s not safe anywhere

As soon as I feel it’s ok for me to fall asleep

I am awakened by the news that another life was taken

This time a child, who’s life was full of promise, just like my son’s

But I guess God felt that those promises would be fulfilled in only 12 short years

That’s a hard thing to reconcile

God is omniscient right?

So that means he knew he would have a gun, he knew it would look real and he knew

That a cop  would pull up and shoot him twice, fatally

God knew it all and yet I have to pray to the same God for comfort from it all

That too is a hard thing for me to reconcile

I need this world to be different

I need the color of my skin not to be a threat

And I need the purity of my heart to overshadow the evils that men do

But my heart is not enough

I thought that it was

I thought that my love could permeate through the stench of blood and death

But it can’t

They can’t feel my love in Ferguson, NY or Maryland

And they damn sure can’t feel it in Cleveland

So I pray for a safe space to hide 12 year olds too immature

To process their own mortality

I pray that God would save us, even from ourselves

GOD can’t you see lives are at stake?

Looking at the state of the world

I see the purge is not just a movie

Blacks being bought and sold on an open market

While predators profit from fracturing families

And all we do is sit

Waiting on a conviction that will never come

So I make a wish

I wish that guns didn’t exist

Then I take my change and throw it in a fountain

Hoping it’s enough to cover the cost of freedom

And watching it sink to the bottom like so many unanswered prayers

Wondering WHAT IS THE COST OF FREEDOM?

And haven’t we already paid enough with the blood of the stolen innocent

That’s a price no mother should have to pay

And in my righteous indignation

I march up to the doors of the establishment

Asking what is their refund policy on racism

They try to ignore my cries

So I ask again, how do I get a refund for the blood of my child

HEY

All I want is a refund, for the blood of my child