Sept 5, 2022
Video
Simulation or that time I saw Quason Turner in my Son's Eyes
By Kimberly Jae
Simulation or that time I saw Quason Turner in my Son's Eyes
By Kimberly Jae
Simulation or that time I saw Quason Turner in my Son's Eyes
By Kimberly Jae
When the simulation began
I saw his body
In a mangled car full of black and brown bodies
The girl
The pretty white girl
with blue eyes and blond hair
drives a car full of pretty white girls
reeks of whiskey and Coke
Lands her car on top of my son's
The Police
So full of concern
for the white girl's
car
I stand on the sidelines
praying to a deaf god of concrete and twisted metal
searching for life in his body
My spirit could not feel his
A mother is supposed to feel her child's spirit
I felt nothing
The pretty white girl
Giggles amongst her friends
Dumps bottles out into the field
The EMTs
Check to see if they were okay
Those boys
Those black and brown boys
Whispering depleted breaths
Mangled in tune with metal
Didn’t draw the EMTs’ concern
The EMTs
burst windows
throw blankets over broken brown and black bodies
Cut through the crushed metal
My sanity shatters faster than metal did
My son. . .to them a nonexistent legacy
A seed crushed before it had a chance to grow
Will be buried /
Sons are supposed to shine light, but I am enveloped in darkness
I hurt
The pretty white girl runs
The pretty white girls stumble and don’t get far
The pretty white girls have lawyers to catch them before the police do
It must be nice to know you can run from the police
not feel bullet ricochet through your bones
to know
you can grow up to be a princess
while my son is destined to be a hashtag
They are pretty white girls
They are not 4 black and brown boys
My son
Blood stained
still in the car
Begins to melt
Motionless
Even in a land of make believe
the life of my son
isn’t as important
as the comfort
of this white girl
I envy
a mother who is not traumatized
every time her child walks out the door
Motherhood
Is not supposed to be
never-ending PTSD
Even in a simulation
I mourn my son
is there no place
A Black woman
will ever know
Peace?
Kimberly Jae is a disabled, aphasic, slam poet ranking in the top 30 slam poets in the world by PSI in 2018. She has received multiple fellowships, made it to slam finals or slams nationals in the USA, Canada and UK and multiple pieces published in video, online, journals and anthologies, with additional forthcoming in 2022. Her first full length manuscript, Baptism, was shortlisted for the Sexton Prize. Her forthcoming chapbook, Pussy Poems, will be released via Tofu Ink Arts Press in 2022.
Image description: An African American woman with curly red hair is leaning against a white background. She wears a slight smile, a navy blue t-shirt with HAPPY written in rainbow colors and cat eye glasses with rainbow rhinestones across the top and white rhinestones across the bottom.