Nation Induced Disorder

It is easy to singularly define people by the worst thing that they have ever done, but it becomes more difficult to imagine what we would want the world to do if it were us.
-- Clint Smith

if my mother were ever convicted for her addiction like my father I wonder
who I would be robbing now

the data from the Fragile Families Study say
my kind of survival displays more behavioral problems
& early juvenile delinquencies

I say: you right I rode into the night w/a pistol in my grey hoody – spitting image
of my father:

his nickname akin to boom
his red skin the only thing I remember
him towering over me black hair red bloodshot eyes

already running
already gone

this is the closest I’ve ever been to becoming
a woman with a number for a name
it’s easier than one might think
to lose yourself so quickly in search of country

II.

Marathon runs of Wentworth
Mist the room like smoke clouds
& I know TV is only TV to someone
That ain’t never been forced to look
Outside their own heartbreak before

What’s a cliff dive to a black man
hustled by his own country?

He earns 92 cents an hour
& my tuition still ain’t free
The woman behind the financial aid counter
Asks me what my father makes

I say:
Furniture for the dorms here
I say:
Grandfatherless children
I say:
I don’t know
I don’t know
I don’t know
Who he is.