My contribution to Enclave is that I will mine poetry (contemporary and otherwise) for quotations that speak to current events. These will be brief, and likely contextualized by nothing but hashtags. My thought was I would do a first post with something about winter. Something fun.
Then this morning I read about the death of Antonio Martin, an 18-year-old black man shot by cops outside St. Louis.
After listening to the statement regarding the grand jury’s decision to not indict the police officer who killed Michael Brown in November, I (and many others) turned to Claudia Rankine’s Citizen. Since that night Citizen continues to have resonance as more and more young black (often) men have fallen under fire from police. This quotation in particular hits hard. It catches my breath. I’ll just leave it here.
Claudia Rankine, Citizen:
[W]here is the safest place when that place / must be someplace other than the body?
(photo by Diana Arterian)