My People (As Anchors)

Brown bodies sink, 
are weighted, stick 
to the ocean floor, falling
from overcrowded rafts
into the arms of their heathen’s heaven.

Brown bodies are shot over 
the border like cannon balls.

Brown bodies heave 
and churn in masses of Squalor and 
Torment, brown bodies match 
their mud-stained houses, 
brown bodies fall into event horizons 
like it’s a tradition and brown bodies 
juxtapose the endings of every 
body of water, because on the news, 
brown bodies cling to each other 
and to the hope of land.

Brown bodies become beautiful
when they are disposed of namelessly
and then are captured by a white man’s 
sympathy, become beautiful 
throat up, stretched out like sodden 
flower petals in the baking sun.

Brown bodies are collateral damage 
like beat-up dolls lying stray 
on your child’s floor. 

America, you grandiose toddler, 
you bumbling youth,
when will the aftershocks of 
your heavy strides stop scattering 
my brown bodies across the Earth 
like rag dolls, like stray crumbs. 

All those brown bodies, 
suspended in the state of
sinking, sinking, sinking.