Black girls go missing, faces not found

on milk cartons or Discovery I.D.

Same with Native American women.

Do the math, calculate the equation

that defines the American psyche,

the amniotic fluid we float in

blind to the snuff film that plays

over and over in a theatre where only

the rich have the price of admission.

Each laugh, gesture, clearing of the throat

erupts from the Om of that home,

a concentration camp song, where we strive

until we die, and those born of our bodies

grow to fill our shoes, put on our raincoats,

inherit the cataracts in our eyes

How, dear God of human beings,

do we witness murder, corroborated 

in the mirror of a billion eyes

yet contemplate innocence, this

or that defense, a technicality, some

evil Trump card played, playing us?

(poem of mine appearing in Inkwell Journal)

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About Mike Wilson

Mike Wilson’s work has appeared in magazines including Cagibi Literary Journal, Stoneboat, The Aurorean, The Ocotillo Review, London Reader, and in anthologies including for a better world 2020 and Anthology of Appalachian Writers Vol. X. He received Kentucky State Poetry Society’s Chaffin/Kash Prize in 2019. He resides in Lexington, Kentucky, but summers in Ecstasy and winters in Despair.

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