Ok this day in 2014, Eric Garner utterer his final words before suffocating at the hands of the NYPD. These words echo the sentiment of many Black people across this country. The term sequelae is used in medicine to describe the lingering effects of disease. Inspired by a research articled entitled Facing The Dragon: Black Mothering, Sequelae, and Gendered Necropolitics in the Americas published by Christen A. Smith in 2016, I found this to be great inspiration for a poem about the aftershocks of state violenceβthe slow death experienced by those left behind, forced to bear trauma as a form of political control. Black women are not only witnesses to the suffering of their sons, brothers, and lovers; they are its targets, its collateral, its intended casualties. Like dark matter, Black womenβs pain is unseen but shapes everything. They are the creation source of Black life, giving birth, mothering, educating, engineering, shaping the future in every senseβyet they are labeled enemies of the state. Blackness itself is framed as something to be feared, a site of suffering, rather than what it truly is: like the universeβbeautiful, infinite, divine, full of energy, movement, and possibility. On this day, I think of Eric Garnerβs mother, Ms. Gwen Carr, and the countless others who have lost their lives, their sons, brothers, sisters and family members at the hands of cowardice and cruel police.
Title: Sequelae
2018
By Rejjia Camphor
