For Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover
Posted by Alysia Harris | Filed under Poetry, Print
Where are my tears?
A little black boy tangled in an even blacker extension cord
dangling from the tie beams in his Massachusetts apartment
and where are my tears?
Lynchings- only in the south.
Gay- only for the 20-somethings
Suicides- only for the white
And now a little black boy fits into a pine box
because he never fit neatly into boxes when he was alive.
For every time they called you fagot.
For every time you took it
in silence and the coach just called it “locker room stuff”.
For every time a locker room was a euphemism for the closet
where you lock up secrets and leave things on hangers.
Where were the teachers?
But where are my tears?
I am sorry, that my sympathy does not come in streams down my face but in words.
I’m sorry that the watershed in my eyelids is only reserved for my own pain.
Sorry, that it cannot flood a pool to rival that in which they drowned Emmitt Till
that it is not rage which yells at TV screens or
mounts protests and sides with LGBT activists.
That it is quiet and that my eulogy for you only lives on in the ears of a few friends.
There is no poetry in this… no way I can make an audience get to their feet
with fly lines and socially conscious rhetoric.
I’m sorry you just aren’t rich enough, just aren’t white enough.
No you aren’t that special.
I will not package your death any more than you have already been labeled.
For everyday you felt alone in halls of adolescent pimple faced pre teens.
For every afternoon alone in your house their words echoing.
For the 3 minutes it took to dangle without air, for every adult sitting in an office chair
taking phone calls and sending test scores on fax machines…
Where was your mother?
But where are my tears?
I just wish that you had lived a few more years,
that you would have been old enough to know the history of that road.
You would have learned that black boys
should never go willingly into a noose that they tied for you
or at least old enough to gain a few more pounds so the tie beam
would have cracked under your weight.
And still I cannot crack under your weight.
That I can write pages about it but never weep.
I’m sorry that when you were flailing no one was there to hold up your feet.
I am sorry that nobody noticed you.
I am sorry that you are 6 feet under and nobody notices you.
I am sorry for the color of your skin, cuz had you been
a little white girl abducted or an 18 year old blonde bombshell
gone missing in Aruba that the whole country would mourn for you.
But no like I said, you have to be content with the ears of a few friends.
I am sorry that suicide is out and the recession is in.
I am sorry that you slipped through the cracks but not through the noose.
I am sorry that you were pure enough to live without a first kiss
and young enough to still be ambiguous.
I am sorry that “11 year old black boy driven to suicide by anti-gay slurs”
is the only voice you will ever have, the only note you will ever leave.
Where is America?
And where are my tears?
One Response to “For Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover”
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Bee Says:
August 26th, 2010 at 7:45 pmAnd I am sorry that without THIS poem i would have gone the rest of my life not even knowing that Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover lived .
smfh .
” cause if you had been a little white girl abducted ” . . .
