By Clint Smith
Today, a black man who was once a black boy
like you got down on one of his knees & laid
his helmet on the grass as this country sang
its ode to the promise it never kept
& the woman in the grocery store line in front
of us is on the phone & she is telling someone
on the other line that this black man who was
once a black boy like you should be grateful
we live in a country where people aren’t killed
for things like this you know she says, in some places
they would hang you for such a blatant act of disrespect
maybe he should go live there instead of here so he can
appreciate what he has & then she turns around
& sees you sitting in the grocery cart surrounded
by lettuce & yogurt & frozen chicken thighs
& you smile at her with your toothless gum smile
& she says that you are the cutest baby she has
ever seen & tells me how I must feel so lucky
to have such a beautiful baby boy & I thank her
for her kind words even though I should not
thank her because I know that you will not always
be a black boy but one day you may be a black man
& you may decide your country hasn’t kept
its promise to you either & this woman or another
like her will forget you were ever this boy & they
will make you into something else & tell you
to be grateful for what you’ve been given
Clint Smith is a writer, teacher, and Ph.D. Candidate at Harvard University. He is a 2014 National Poetry Slam champion, a 2017 recipient of the Jerome J. Shestack Prize from The American Poetry Review and has received fellowships from Cave Canem, the Art For Justice Fund, and the National Science Foundation. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, The New Republic and he has delivered two popular TED Talks, The Danger of Silence & How to Raise a Black Son in America. His debut collection of poems, Counting Descent, was published in 2016 by Write Bloody Publishing. It won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award.
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