The Killing Field

for Samira and Tamir Rice

How then do you to expect her to live
next to this fertile ground? This red clay, blood
crimson, nourished earth with her son grown
as root and weed and blossom still tender and green?

Now rotting.

So instead she removes herself. Ends the planting
season which saw her planted in grief/in place/in stasis/
a star exploding unto itself until a black hole is all that’s left. She
is a constellation. Then connect the dots between

child and suspect
man and boy.

Mere seconds before eternity.
Until the blood spilled in the field.
Until she could see nothing of snow.
Nothing but white
noise and scream and tackle and blood and cuffs
and white and snow and cold and home and fear
and black and star and then

explosion.

By Athena Dixon

Biography:

Athena Dixon is Founder and Editor in Chief of Linden Avenue Literary Journal. Her poetry and creative non-fiction has appeared in Compose, Pluck!, This!, Blackberry: A Magazine, and For Harriet among others.

She writes, edits, and resides in Philadelphia.