harriet tubman speaks to
sonya massey
I rebuke you in the name of jesus
– sonya massey
they both sit at sonya’s kitchen table
smoke cigarettes the smoke
unfolding from the hallows
of their mouths
harriet holds sonya’s hands
sure and steady
sonya speaks quiet
the walls thin and perverse
pitted with bullets
smeared blood the color
of rust shows
harriet her children
brown and willowy in photos
they talk of everything
summer barbecues and laughter
how god is an unsteady shield
for bullets or bombs
the sun begins to rise
pale and bloodless
the same sky cast over gaza
harriet and sonya pray
on july 6th, 2024, sonya massey was shot to death by a police officer in her home, after calling for assistance regarding a suspected home invasion
chrystul kizer reads of
harriet tubman in prison
on the worst days she reads of harriet as a child
emptying traps in a frozen marsh
imagines her bare chilled limbs feels the ache
of icy fingers trawling dark water for the dead
she reads how harriet studied escape like a religion
fluent in the land and sky could translate
the position of faithless stars into flight
then looks around her cell a gray bitter
lesson and remembers her own fleeing
from wisconsin to louisiana trees
gowned in snow the press of january’s sulky sun
against her face the dead white man
who raped her at 16 frozen and gone
her bullet buried forever in his chest
and she is alone at last facing a thousand miles
of winding exultant road a child following its mother home
chrystul kizur is a young black girl and survivor of sex trafficking, who killed her abuser in self defense, and was sentenced to eleven years in prison