10th anniversary of the Emanuel Nine Massacre: A Poem

(a poem about the ten-year anniversary of the Emanuel Nine massacre. Click here to listen to my interview with NPR about the poem and the anniversary. The text of the interview is here.)

Charleston
is back
at the doorway
of the church
again.

we are knocking
on the hard
but surreal
threshold
of memory,

looking
for answers
after living
with the silence
that followed
the gunshots.

ten years
later,
this city
is touched
by the thin veil of
of time ~
that strange,
shape-shifting thing
that has made
the massacre
both distant
& deeply
personal.

we’ve been
unlocked
by sadness.

it’s a weight
that will not shift,
a stone
that does not soften,
a door that
will remain open,
a nightmare
that sharpened us
and stiffened
our bones.

ten years later,
I keep wondering,
how has Charleston
changed?

how has it not?

for many of us,
this gospel of grief
runs in the family.

it arrives
without warning,
visits us
when we
talk about
our history,

makes a home
inside the body

even though
we did not
give it the
key.

ten years later
and pain
is once again
passed around
this country
like a collection plate
for the devil.

it has become
inherited
like a name.

but joy
lives here, too.

laughter also has a home
on our tongues.

joy is one of
the echoes of
Black resilience,

it reflects on all of us
when we look at each other
in the mirror.

joy sings
in soul food kitchens,
flows through
Black music,

strums the
thick skin
of a banjo,

& dances
to the downbeat
of free jazz

even though
none of the keys
that unchained us
closed
the door
to racism.

and ten years later,
hatred no longer hides.
it hangs in the air
like humidity,

coats and suffocates
the airwaves,
curls into our lungs,
walks down Calhoun Street
like it owns the place.

… but somehow
we keep breathing.

this gospel of grief
has too many verses,
and we know the chorus
by heart.

we sing with cracked voices
and full throats,
as the names
of the Nine
flow out of us
like a haunted hymn:

Clementa.
Cynthia.
Daniel.
DePayne.
Ethel.
Myra.
Sharonda.
Susie.
Tywanza.

amen.

ten years later,
I no longer
mask my anger.
I bring
this broken heart
with me
wherever I go

& place it
on the altar
as an offering
to God:

”Set me free
and help me embrace
both light and shadow.”

this may be
what it means
to be human:

to live with joy and pain,
and know that
the keys we carry
can be forged from trauma,

to have hope
when memory reminds
us of heartbreak,

when
faith feels fragile.

holy city, haunted hymn (the door stays open)