Injustice Watch Poem Of The Week: Unfree

From Injustice Watch:

By Danielle Maya Banks

Editor’s note: This poem is part of our #SpreadTheWord poem of the week series, featuring work by Chicago artists based on Injustice Watch reporting. This poem was inspired by our reporting, As cops’ versions of shootings contested, City pays millions and Beat, shoot or abuse someone? No jail for Chicago cops. For more poetry in this series, click here.

You asphyxiate
My Capacity
Wear thin,
My Morality
Deny
Deny
Deny
Me, Humanity

How, then?
have you “missed” the silken thread?
Iridescent,
as it glitters beneath a burning sun:

Our carousel to the Heavens

Because
to be Black
and Alive
is to be awaiting
Ascent

————Unfree

Danielle Maya Banks is a journalist, creative writer, and advocate for the elusive equality that our nation claims to pursue. In the age of the pandemic occurring alongside our racial reckoning, Danielle uses her pen to speak out against these injustices, drawing her peers’ gaze to the urgency of our current demand for an equitable society. In the age of Covid-19, she believes, our lacking compassion and individualist approach to life and politics has proven deadly, as it has been since 1619.

Injustice Watch is a non-partisan, not-for-profit, multimedia journalism organization that conducts in-depth research exposing institutional failures that obstruct justice and equality. For more stories from Injustice Watch, visit InjusticeWatch.org.