"The Lives of Black Teens"

For Kentrell Provens


I’m just along for the two-hour long four-hour drive

in a black static Zeppelin transitioning into

grey transistor frequencies resting on

a smoothed white pair of raw axles

I see only at 7 o’clock.

A silver sliver road rest stop stopsign

needs rubber asphalt passion between cement dividing

legs I can’t help but notice again clandestinely.

The trees are attacking my reddened frail eyes

through cracked-enough windows to

not quite inhale the new native’s seltzer blackened

as life does to these blackened high school students

flipping their fingers into a secret finger-flicking

group signal I don’t have time to decipher.

One of the girls tells me,

In the past, I did what they

judge me for today.

They should fuck off.

I never stop their opinions’

wording and maybe I should or shouldn’t

care what my colleagues would think of

this social experiment we try so damn hard

to believe in when there’s no placebo in

place to make a glass of Kool-Aid.

I knew one-third of the three homicides this week,

and 227 isn’t enough to stop one more

crossfire incident.