Questioning the Days

Where is Oscar Grant?
Where is Iraq?
How lost is the memory of the wounds?
What hurts more: to be forgotten, to be remembered, to be erased?

Oscar Grant
is
a black dove
Sheafing peace in a spent bullet
cuddled by his folded arms behind his back
and stars have nested
in the holes that were carved in his back and heart

Iraq has disappeared
in the long night of war
in the long day of soldiers
who long to be home
against those
who long for their homes
to be left alone

Our skins have become the walls
that determine
where we can
and cannot
go.
Black skin longer than the wall of China
God cannot cross the street without avoiding
the security check
She must have her iris scanned, fingerprinted, photographed
must prove she is God
Oscar Grant has no choice, he is black
No need to ask for papers, for ID
go straight to jail or die
God, Oscar Grant, there is no difference
since in Iraq God is not white
her believers must be guilty.

*

Oscar Grant
lies bleeding dreams and stars
at the Fruitvale BART station.
The cops smoking cigarrettes in oblivion
The flip-cams, the cell-phone cams whirring
You have to film this to believe it.

*

Iraq has bomb craters on her back
What can you build with $12 billion a month in war and occupation?

Iraq is my black sister my black brother my blackened eyes

How do you answer these questions:
We are not all Oscar Grant?
We are not all Iraq?
Sustainable violence sprouts from our pores?
...