by Mercedes Lawry

The small protest marches around the block, 

past tidy yards and modest houses. 

Occasionally, a thumbs up or a door 

closing on the ruckus. Come march with us, 

a young woman calls. A few do, but mostly 

it’s suburban silence. One man is down on a knee, 

arm upraised into a fist like a fierce warrior. 

We’re here for Kailyn, 

a 13-year-old threatened by a neighbor with lynching. 

The young are in front, loud and defiant.  

We old are clinging to the last shred of hope. 

We’ve done this all our lives, the hamster wheel. 

There are chants and drums from Pacific Islanders  

and moms in yellow and children clapping.  

Briefly, we feel good. 

Later, I sit on my couch and watch the police attack – 

bear mace, pepper spray, flash bangs, hurling people 

to the ground. Hands up, don’t shoot. An armored truck 

rolls in. Protesters stiffen their wall of umbrellas. 

Cops rustle through a box of canisters, 

stuffing their pouches, as styrofoam  

scatters on the street like heavy snow. 

It will be a long night, 

morning voices now faded, the familiar beast 

wrapping its claws around my ribs.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mercedes Lawry (she/her) is the author of Small Measures, which won the Vachel Lindsay Poetry Prize from Twelve Winters Press, and three chapbooks, the latest, In the Early Garden with Reason, which was selected by Molly Peacock for the 2018 WaterSedge Chapbook Contest. Her poetry has appeared in such journals as Poetry, Nimrod, and Prairie Schooner. Mercedes’s work has been nominated five times for a Pushcart Prize and her fiction was a semi-finalist in The Best Small Fictions 2016. Additionally, she’s published stories and poems for children. She lives in Seattle.