Sandra Bland Poem by Sheila Whiting

The police say they found her hanging in

her jail cell they called it suicide we called it murder

black folk everywhere

erupted in grief the voices calling her

martyr carried her smiling picture as

proof they called it suicide

we called it murder what if it was both

what if they dragged her so hard against

the pavement she did not want to get up

or if they laid brick over brick until

the Texas Highway was a catacomb the

culmination of all our past lives caving

in on her until the weight of it was too

much I know what it is to be crushed to

have hope drained from my bones a

trembling black woman with trauma

stretching across generations I've been

crying for centuries I cannot stop I

know what it's like to have one foot in

the grave to have a freezer snack with

liquor but an empty fridge succumb to

stagnancy and decay in my own bed my

nightmares clamoring out of my soul

panic attack shaking me until I too AM a

prison I will share for myself many

times but it was never my idea whether I

jumped always pushed someone so put me

on a cliff oppression can kill you from

the inside out break you until you are a

body of casualty strangle you learn so

breath is a distant memory

we've gotten so used to dying we've

begun to expedite the process suicide a

way of cutting out the middleman there

is the unique kind of sadness that comes

with being despised without reason that

comes from self hating irrational

decision to make whether or not she tied

the noose myself

she was lynched if she broke or was

broken enough to be a strong black woman

sometimes it is too much to carry the

torch in there handling both insights to

make the movements they will stylish you

in the lead the margins only that

everyone shed on your back to know your

face might not make the nightly news

even when we shout and say her name

Sandra bland on our t-shirts we flatten

her into a symbol of the movement turned

her into O'Malley cry Marsh for a name

and it gladly the woman what her that

night her voice was a ceasefire what

does she lay down her arms and walked

a final act of protest what if she went


into the light before they could drag

herhero smiling in every picture

does that make her any less deserving of

a revolution some womendie for

a cause and some women just and still

wants to be worth fighting for

even if I surrender.



by-kai Davis