a poem

/ janpriddyoregon

by Michael Meyerhofer

FOR AHMAUD ARBERY, AN UNARMED BLACK JOGGER KILLED FOR ALLEGEDLY LOOKING IN THE WINDOW OF A HOUSE UNDER CONSTRUCTION

 

I was twenty-two, white, in love

that day I wasn’t shot for trespassing.

It happened nearly two decades ago.

We started out in the backseat

 

of her parents’ oxblood Subaru,

heading back from the country club

 

with bellies full of prime rib

and vegetables I could not name.

 

Then her father touched the brake,

pointed to a mansion being built

 

beyond a phalanx of dogwoods,

timbers stacked like wine-washed

 

bones on a generous plot of Iowa soil.

The crews had already gone home,

 

just some golden tape left behind.

So we pulled over, got out, explored—

 

her father darkly pinstriped, her mother

sporting a heavy rosary of pearls.

 

Before long, neighbors spotted us

and waved, smiling from their houses.

 

Unfazed, my girlfriend and I

slipped away and touched primally

 

in what might have been a stranger’s

future bedroom, its walls unmade.

 

After a great while, we reunited

beside half a staircase. Her parents

 

forgave our absence with a shrug

and the suggestion of frozen yogurt.

 

On the way back, I could smell her

on my fingers, which made her blush.

 

Meanwhile, her parents shared

daydreams of their own mansion

 

with taller floors and windows,

thicker drapes to block the sunset.

—from Poets Respond
May 9, 2020

__________

Michael Meyerhofer: “When I read about Ahmaud Arbery, murdered for supposedly looking in the window of a house still under construction, I immediately flashed back to a time when I’d done something similar (though actually a lot more obtrusive) without suffering any consequences whatsoever. There were four of us that day: my girlfriend and me, plus her parents. However, because all of us were white, and her parents also happened to be wealthy (as evidenced by their clean new car and formal attire), no one in the neighborhood batted an eyelash. To be honest, I might never even have given that incident a second thought if I hadn’t read about the circumstances behind Arbery’s murder. Given my own impoverished childhood, I admit that I sometimes chafe at the notion that I’ve benefited from white privilege. That’s the biggest hallmark of white privilege, though: those who benefit from it rarely even know it’s there, until something happens that makes the double standard impossible to deny.”

[This reprinted without permission. I can heartily recommend Rattle for sustaining poetry—in every sense of that term.]

 

And as if we needed further proof of his disrespect for women, the rule of law, and simple respect and justice:

“The Trump administration is asking a federal court to throw out a lawsuit from three attorneys general that seeks to add the Equal Rights Amendment to the US Constitution.

In January, the attorneys general of Virginia, Illinois and Nevada sued US archivist David Ferriero in US District Court in Washington, DC, to force him to “carry out his statutory duty of recognizing the complete and final adoption” of the ERA as the 28th Amendment to the Constitution.”

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