POUR, TEAR, CARVE

By Carolyn Joyner

Caught in the Erasure

of body, language, identity—memory
across intersections of past, present, future,
we slip between time, do “the work of dying”
in the silence around sound, become

the blue flame burning black, rolled
inward from self’s edge, to exist within
an existence invisible to public eye.
There is no redemptive hand to reach inside

our necks, restore crushed larynges, rip off 
the seven-knot collar they wear, no voice to shout
HEAL! But ours, Ogun’s, giving command
to “Keep on-a-walkin’…,” say their names.

—after Desmond Beach’s #SAYTHEIRNAMES2, 2021

Carolyn Joyner is a Washington, DC poet who has worked and presented in community, is a Hurston-Wright and Cave Canem fellow, and has a Master of Arts degree in creative writing from the Johns Hopkins University.