“..people forget that redemption is tailor made for the wretched.”
-Stanley Tookie Williams
Will we call a woman a woman
a man a man further
will we call ourselves beings
or more truly Becomings
instead of articulating surfaces
“… a large,
deliberate black man..,”
beseeches the State
for his life. Nowhere
does it describe the white hand
that holds his life within
a fountain pen
it is true
black is black
white is white
and in between
invisible, indivisible
above and beyond
the opposites
who burn on either side
a giant face smiles
*Stanley Tookie Williams, co-founder of the Crips gang, has been on death row since 1981; he is set to be executed this December 13th. The quote within the poem is from an article by Adam Liptak in the December 2nd New York Times.
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