Enlightenment

by Jenee Skinner

To George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and their mothers—here are your flowers

American Identity is a pock marked Frankenstein, a limb from every culture  firebolted to life.
Abraham Lincoln dusted off the scripture “A house divided against itself cannot stand,” 
Assassinated for delegating freedom, became a martyr to a black humanity that didn’t exist yet
Affirmative Action sought to nourish minority bodies, minds, and streets with democracy

Benjamin Banneker drank in Jefferson’s hypocrisy as much as his death
Bedlam crypts on Monte Cristo mistress and her blackamoor heritage,
Brown v. Board of Education integrated silent hatred with better textbooks,
Bystander effect has taken over by brainwash with shallow “Hi, how are you?”

Cotton gin memories cultivate bloody stubbed laborers stripped down to victims of 3/5
Civil Rights protesters fought through spit, rabid dog bites, teargas for the other 2/5ths
Communism bedridden under Capitalism shrugs at the piss and shit of homelessness
Cosby scandal lead to broken glass frame dreams of American mainstream gentility

De facto’s “in practice but not necessarily ordained by law” is evidence of country’s infidelity
Disciples inspire flat limp purposed lives after centuries of religious freedom downfalls 
Double consciousness of colorless self within a mapped history prejudice and -isms that lead to
Demagogues’ appeal to the carnivorous convenience of an audience’s lesser instincts

Ellis Island hope of new opportunities away from the skin and bone change
Erie Canal swampy compact route to slaves’ fresh air free unknown in Canada,
Environmentalist 60 degree days 16 degree nights, Styrofoam engrained soil like
Education, a biodegrading generation, a fat-bellied business shipping away malfunctions.

Formation, a homage of muggy Southern heritage remixed with 90s and black mothers’ loss
Feminist advocating Eve’s blessing, birthing leaders and rallying cries to man’s love and respect
Firearms to the workforce, splintering spine healing sisterhood, esteem, and,  womb wounds.
Fishbowl surveying brined whipmark scabs of invisible men singing Follow the Drinking Gourd.

German forefather, married, milking creambabies out of my mammie, milked like
Goldmines and railroads in the west coast cages where Chinese men were disposed,
Genesis man leaves the father’s house, but still lives off entitlement like a wailing babe
Girls segregated white nude spread of 24-year-old confusion and experimentation

Homegoing: doorway to Gold Coast and Harlem, stolen souls semen creased
Holy Spirit uses a golden-laced brimstone necklace to reconnect family lines.
Heroin curdles the marrow of jazz and loose women, each vein forgives
HIV, needle’s karma for grimy bathroom fixes, red light district anonymity, or heirloom.

Immigrants, everyone other than Native American
Internment ignorance for Italians, Japanese, Germans,
Identity muddled
Indigenous wooden skin smooths out rough edges of bone and soil

Jim Crow crooked necks swinging, crammed dilapidated homes, and shabby books
Jehovah/Judas/Judaism, blood money hypocrisy, son of man betrayed with a kiss
J Cole fold clothes intimacy, shadowing street dealer’s tale of fatherhood
Justin my brother bully and father left behind, his curious fingers on me at 7 lingers at 25

Klu Klux Klan calculate cult hatred twisted scriptures sadism burning flesh and conscience
King, past moving with present towards the future’s trigger happy warning to stay back
Kanye West, Jesus walks above the bass of trap music and oiled up media sexrealitymoms
Kodak’s downsized Eastman museum industry, red-gold autumn view from East Ave. Drink in

Lemonade’s decorated lips, sorrow song, voluptuous mulatto negro woman spiritual,
LGBTQIA an alphabet soup served in a safe space, the taste is like everyone else. Please
Lynch discrimination. Bury it and mark its grave in history next to Jefferson’s
Louisiana Purchase branding new land boundaries and Indian exile. Remember,

Muslim is not synonymous with 9/11 attacks and ISIS, dark continent’s
Middle passage disease of war, profit, religious cleansing repeated in
Manifest destiny cold mountain cannibalized search for more America. Missing Midtown plaza economy. Multicultural clocks still tick in memoriam

1964 Riots a drunken neighborhood nightlife brawl for a sober better.
19th Amendment women crushed under hooves and glass bottles for votes
North Star free minds from fermenting runaway fears and fugitive slave miseducation
Nuclear missiles phallic pride dangling the next world war from Cuba to Korea to

Obama’s black man compromise between all American rights and government rebuttals,
Oil reserves bloodchild of consumerist corner store runs and Iranian minefields
One Hundred Years of Solitude to poetically dilute parasitic family famine and patriotism.
Orange is the New Black lesbian comedy replaces slave labor law statistics entrenched

Prison Industrial Complex loophole for corporate plantations cashing in the  Dakota Access
Pipeline, disrupt sacred burial grounds and clean water of Standing Rock tribes going viral like
Police brutality webcam diaries reveal half-truth evidence fullproof bullets and coroner reports

Q-Tip on We The People Pan-African striped collage of 21st frontier politic invasion,
Queer queen Alicia Garza leads Ferguson freedom ride followers in undercut activism
Quaker exodus and exile of Moses Brown from brotherhood business of midAtlantic serfdom

Reservation breeding grounds of fetal alcohol syndrome and meth depressions
Refugees squat in mold-ridden basement, living off minimum wage life support
Russia’s Putin crimson hands leaves a stain the 2016 presidential election exploited as 

Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song blaxploitation balloon figurine features before
Susan B. Anthony’s time with Frederick Douglass having tea on Madison Avenue
Strange Fruit haunting contortions of Primus life rotting like Meeropol’s summer poplars

Thirteenth amendment cocaine crackdown on America’s commercialized lease
Travel ban on terrorism sanction paranoia for green card fumbles with Homeland Security
Trump 70-year-old sitting bull supremacy of bankruptcies and eroticized European plastiques
Trail of Tears washed away the 5 civilized tribes past the Mississippi River towards domesticity.

Underground Railroad mosquito heavy cottonmouth predators to Northern oaks and factories
Utilitarian happiness away from second hand smoke and closer to rights of Alcatraz criminals
Uncle Tom sweeping subservience ivory rimmed smile circling crab barrel mentality.

Voted with their feet Great Migration from black belt chokehold to urban rebirth and poetry
Vivian pocket-size matriarch watching us from the bookshelf by the family Bible
Vietnam War napalm and Agent Orange burn the fall of Saigon and naked village children
V for Vendetta masked like Dunbar’s caged words hiding revenge turned revolution

Waterboarding secrets pulled from lungs against the interrogator’s restraints til lies and truth
Wounded Knee seized, Ogala seeths over forged peace treaty permission slips American History

X neo-Nazi skinhead trauma trigger from father to son’s skull, prison set him free
Xanax benzo comatose cocktail dependency on coasting anxiety’s twitch in a  crowd

Yellow journalism big-eyed letters yahoo Pulitzer poynter paid puffery
Yahweh manifest flesh from scripture to conscious through cockles of centuries

Zimmerman nosebleed paranoia stalking versus shot behind the back
Zygote yolking youth from my born-again mother towards
Zion’s mountain homeland to David’s Jerusalem channeling God’s watch over us.