I thought by now the whistles would warp us
to a future in peace  jump me ahead of this dark

underground level   Mario   I have crushed
enough Koopas to keep my genocidal ancestry

whooping from their battleground graves   didn’t
feel much sanctity from Arlington Cemetery

sorry   when they buried my brother at Ohio
Western Reserve gravestones orderly as pill

bottles on the shelves of corporate pharmacy
what rings in my brain are the gunshots

of old white veterans fired during Clinton’s
final ceremony  bullets whizzing up the sky

just to land on the dirt covering
graves of my genocidal ancestry

 

(originally published in Impspired, Spring 2020)