No one will grieve the loss
of Edward Colston, knocked from
his perch in Bristol. Taking
him down, unharbored, is
how black brothers and sisters
remodel the thrust defiant fist
of Jesse Owens, replay Kaepernick
taking a knee. Everywhere,
from Washington, D.C., to L.A.,
from the tobacco fields
of Richmond to Deep South cities'
cobbled streets, the old monuments
fall with protested memories
of four hundred years of blood
spilled in the holds of slave ships,
among New World forced laborers,
in childrens' chartered colonies,
behind white masters' closed doors,
on police batons and bayonets, as
traded human flesh. Hungry consumers
of lives worked with whips tumble,
toppled in public squares, unclean
auction markets cease, are put aflame.
The balls and chains broken, marked
backs of cotton pickers, cooks,
domestics, sex workers, produce
pickers, car-wash attendants,
cleaning crews finally straighten,
unburdened by other men's histories
and towering high above the bannered
crosses alight in Jim Crow's ashes.