🆇🆇🆇🆇🆇 🆇🆇🆇🆇🆇’S FATHER CUSSES OUT EVERY 𝕎𝕙𝕚𝕥𝕖 PERSON IN THE AUDIENCE WHILE DISCUSSING THE DEATH OF HIS ONLY SON

El Williams III
November 2020 – January 2021

This is an excerpt of an excerpt of a longer experimental poem in progress. Though I’m considering all poems to be experiments,
I say experimental here, as in it’s a language-driven poem that is also curious about readers’ visual and aural interactions with it in regards to form and content. As a Kwansaba working as a chant, this piece represents ode and elegy, and acts as a memorial for Abdul Kamal (a Black man murdered by American police in an American city).

I’ve learned that the imperative, “give this body its body back,” stands in for many different things for many different people. For some, the body, here, represents land. For some, the body, here, is a means of mental and physical ability. For some, the body, here, is an object surveilled by patriarchy. Though all of these work, I’m considering, first the father’s demand, then secondly the collective demand of the Black body (physically, emotionally, spiritually, economically, etc.). Reparations. Repair. Ultimately, this is a demand for reclamation of oneself.

Thinking of the now, as we—the world— undergo the Covid-19 pandemic and global uprisings against white supremacy, it’s my hope that this PSA serves as a call to action. Justice.