Samuel DuBose,
The first time I heard your name,
it was written in marker on my arm,
almost five years after the
gunshot entered your head
My lack of name recognition
was both my fault and the fault
of a country that allows this to happen
more often than I can keep count
A suspended license becoming another death sentence,
at the hands of an officer whose eager hands
were all over your door and whose
itchy trigger finger didn’t wait to follow his shouts of stop,
both almost simultaneously entering your brain
The bodycam footage and falsified police report
leading only to a hung jury, dismissed charges
So instead of playing with your children,
recording music, and riding your motorcycle
on this warm May day,
you were reduced to a name on my arm
as I stood in a parking lot full of arms
yet there was no shortage of names
to fill the waiting arms
1 Jun 2020
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