Missing Persons Report Filed for the Knife of Charleena Lyles: June 18, 2017

police
glanced her tongue & saw blade
conjured gun
from the cockiness
of her throat dare breathe
saw vertebrae of her quaking spine
/ grenade keys
mistook her words
as / gunpowder
every
blink
a
/ trigger
she
pregnant ticking
/ bomb.

seattle police call this nightmare-making
“Training Policy”

(using a taser “wasn’t protocol”.
“hands on approach” would have
“put them at risk”
pepper spray was “tactically counterproductive”
could have endangered
the officer’s ability
to
breathe.)

“There was no viable alternative,”
department says,
besides twisting her body — black & alive —
into a banshee

a black woman’s body
is always gleaned more weapon
than mother
as if nothing
can harvest here but
husks of babies
& bullets.

Charleena Lyle’s knife last seen:
cutting the ribbon on Inauguration Day of Seattle’s new mayor
whose glass-ceiling womanhood
— like her title “trailblazer” —
is also steeped in whiteness.

Charleena’s knife last seen:
cutting the limestone of this
Glittering Republic
skyscraper
by
skyscraper
headstones in a city she might
have once called hers
but would never hug
her back

Charleena’s knife last seen:
haunting the guilt of officers & a city too infatuated
with its own reflection
to see her
gleaming in the corners of
their Trumped-up nightmares.

Seattle,
after all,
only has so much patience
for those who are black and angry
trauma longer than a soundbite
and a week of headlines

“how awful they must feel,” someone pale & alive tells me,
“to have killed someone by mistake. To have to live with that.”

police brutality ain’t supposed to happen here, right?
not in this safe space city
its liberals are so heartbroken.
too bad their bleeding hearts don’t feed justice, just-stain hands.
too bad their guilt never makes it to the courthouses, somehow.
“too bad” “too bad” too bad”

Charleena’s knife last seen:
cutting umbilical cord of
uniformed men
babied by a society that will always
call their fist an open palm
who will never teach them how to pronounce
a c c o u n t a b i l i t y
in front of a mirror

“maybe they feel guilty,
but she’s still dead,” I say.

Missing Persons Report for the Words I Did Not Say:
I CAN’T MAKE IT
THROUGH AN ARTICLE ABOUT THE SHOOTING
WITHOUT CRYING

THE SOBS BEATING MY CHEST
FEEL LIKE GUNSHOTS

Last seen:
shattering every,
heart of glass
& blood too dark
to bring up at dinner.
GUESS WHAT?
YOU’RE REELING FROM THE KICKBACK OF A GUN
YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW YOU SHOT.

Charleena Lyles is still dead.
Seattle thrives & she is still dead.
Mayor sharpens her reputation on her headstone at the MLK rally & she is still dead
Police try holding her knife
up to a mirror
it shrivels into ash
yet she is still dead.

she is still dead.
she is still dead.