Dear Miss Jeantel:
Dear Miss Jeantel:
By Lolita Stewart-White
And I hate how she sings acapella,
how notes ring out of her chest
and blast through the courtroom
like buckshot.
And I hate that she won’t be quiet.
And I wish the words written in cursive
that she can’t read will loop
around her throat and tighten
until she chokes.
And I hate the way she recounts
how Trayvon called his killer
“creepy ass cracka.”
And it hurts when her startled eyes
flit up because she can’t follow the questions.
And it hurts when the almost all-white
jury looks away.
And I want to be her in this moment
wearing a white, cotton dress
with white pearls and white teeth
answering the defense attorney’s questions
white and clean.
And I hate myself for loathing her.
And I hate that my ranch house in the suburbs
that I own with my husband
with palm trees and a pool in the backyard
changes nothing about what white folks
think about us.
Lolita Stewart-White lives and works in Miami. Her work has appeared in the Iowa Review, Callaloo and Kweli. She was a semi-finalist for the Rattle Poetry competition as well as the Boston Review/Discovery Prize. Ms. Stewart-White has received fellowships from Cave Canem, the Atlantic Center for the Arts and the Betsy Hotel’s Writers Room. Most recently she was the winner of the Paris- American Readers Series where she was invited to New York City to read at the Poets House with Mark Doty and Tomas Q. Morin.