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poetry We See You

Oregon poet Angela Decker speaks calmly but insistently—“We see you”—to the “plague” of race murders.

We See You

By Angela Decker

Golden Shovel with credit to e.e. cummings’ “Buffalo Bill’s”

So much loss and we can’t say how

it will ever be okay. What the good folks will do,

your leaders, well they don’t care about you

especially the big guy. Us brown, us poor are like

barn cats, we cry and yowl, fight for a piece of your

peace, your ease in a world where your boys in blue

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hunt us for sport and the rest just watch wet-eyed,

say glad that’s not my crushed neck, my boy.

No cure for this plague, but we see you Ma’am, Mister,

bible in hand. Ain’t it your god has you burnin’ after death?

Angela Decker is an Ashland poet and writer whose work has appeared in Nasty Women Poets: An Anthology of Subversive Verse, Hip Mama, Wisconsin Review, and other journals.  Her chapbook, Splendid Catastrophe is published by Finishing Line Press.  She works at Jefferson Public Radio, and lives with her husband, two very tall sons, and often a lot of foster kittens.