Arbery, remember that name.

I am late to be aware of the killing of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia. I overheard others in the household conversing about his death.
The 25 year old was jogging through a neighborhood, when two armed men, a father and son, pursued him in a pickup. Arbery’s path was obstructed, and in the course of struggle a shotgun blast killed him. The father and son were white. Arbery was black. Arbery was unarmed.

I know,  I was not there. The basic elements of the killing were gained from a CNN summary which I just read. What constitutes the “facts” of the case depends upon who tells the story. It is worth noting that the killing took place two months ago. Two prosecutors have recused themselves, and a third has been asked to step down. The perpetrators have just recently been charged with murder. As you would expect there is a ‘tap-dance’ about citizen’s arrest and self-defense. Solidifying connection to old fashioned lynchings that were a post-Civil War feature in this part of the country, — the whole event was captured to video by a neighbor. (The neighbor was white) Images for a virtual lynching party?!  Perhaps.

I think that I live in a time-warp, existential whiplash.  I am dragged back to the 19th century.  Americans rally around the flag, which flag matters little.  Either flag is a symbol, ‘don’t tread on me, etc…’  All the while it is Ok to vent moral exhaustion and silent despair, — to literally kill people of color, particularly black people.

As have others, I too, offer this poem by Jericho Brown in memory of Ahmaud Arbery.

“Bullet Points”

by Jericho Brown

I will not shoot myself
In the head, and I will not shoot myself
In the back, and I will not hang myself
With a trashbag, and if I do
I promise you, I will not do it
In a police car while handcuffed
Or in the jail cell of a town
I only know the name of
Because I have to drive through it
To get home. Yes, I may be at risk,
But I promise you, I trust the maggots
And the ants and the roaches
Who live beneath the floorboards
Of my house to do what they must
To any carcass more than I trust
An officer of the law of the land
To shut my eyes like a man
Of God might, or to cover me with a sheet
So clean my mother could have used it
To tuck me in. When I kill me, I will kill me
The same way most Americans do,
I promise you: cigarette smoke
Or a piece of meat on which I choke
Or so broke I freeze
In one of these winters we keep
Calling worst. I promise that if you hear
Of me dead anywhere near
A cop, then that cop killed me. He took
Me from us and left my body, which is,
No matter what we’ve been taught,
Greater than the settlement a city can
pay to a mother to stop crying, and more
Beautiful than the brand new shiny bullet
Fished from the folds of my brain

Who is the poet, Jericho Brown?

Brown earned a PhD from the University of Houston, an MFA from the University of New Orleans, and a BA from Dillard University. He is the recipient of the Whiting Writers’ Award and fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation. Brown is an associate professor and the director of the Creative Writing program at Emory University in Atlanta.