Message to the White House

You hate me, I know
You hate my people
You hate what we represent
My flesh is the night’s untold tale
My eyes are the dark tunnels Harriet Tubman marched into
My hair is nappy, my lips are full like bloated rose
petals swollen from rain drops
My hair, darker than the hearts of supremacists
and I carry the weight
of what it means to have skin like mine
from those long gone

You sit on a throne, white as the moon
Whiter than the nation you conquer
and craft a plan to melt the golden wings of my people

You don’t have the power to steal the waves underneath our ships
You are the ones who brought us here
and now this is our country too

On the news
somber tears float on unkind winds
Another one of my brothers has died at your whim

I bet you’re making a killing
from making us out to be killers
stuffing us into your for-profit prisons
Engraving us with lead, a new branding,
and yet you dare to speak on that podium as if
we begged the bullets to take refuge in our bodies
begged them to make a home in our decay

You’ve conducted a mental, perceptual genocide
systematically murdering our image
In the minds of the unsuspecting– even our own
But it haunts you doesn’t it, my black fingers
crawling up your pristine, cotton colored monuments
dragging my bullet riddled body slowly up your pedestal
up to where you stand with condescending eyes looking down
on our struggle. I bet it terrifies your sleepless nights
in your whitehouse, the symbol of smiling freedom and democracy
That same ivory castle that was built atop the scarred, ebony backs
of freedom-starved men. Ironic isn’t it.

By Sankara Olama-Yai

Biography:

Poems by Sankara”Le Prince Héritier” Olama-Yai. Sankara is an LGBTQ+, African American student who currently studies at Penn State. They is a reader for Frontier poetry. Poems have previously been published by Weasel press, InSpiritry and Military Review, they have had work accepted by 805 lit won three Scholastic Art&Writing awards for his poetry. Sankara is in the process of publishing their first two poetry books with Vital Narrative Press.