by Ashley Elizabeth

It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!

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My father does not believe women
who say they have been raped
He asks questions like
why and how and why now
as if assault on their bodies is merely an inconvenience
as if their bodies do not rot on their own with each passing second.
They do not need help feeling less than.

He asks why I am so affected
by the orange man in office with the tiny hands
and other men stepping down from positions of power.
I do not have the heart to tell him my brother
did not always keep his hands to himself.

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Ashley Elizabeth (she/her) is a Pushcart-nominated writer and teacher from Baltimore, MD. Her poetry has appeared in OutWrite, Voicemail Poems, and Stanchion, among others. She is the author of chapbooks, you were supposed to be a friend (Nightingale & Sparrow, 2020) and black has every right to be angry (Alternating Current Press). Ashley's debut collection, A Family Thing, is forthcoming from Redacted Books/ELJ Editions (August 2024). When Ashley isn't teaching or working as the Chapbook Editor with Sundress Publications, she habitually posts on Twitter and Instagram (@ae_thepoet). She lives with her partner and their cats.

by Ashley Elizabeth

when teachers think field trips
to plantation and cotton field
are “great ideas” for black students,
I know their ancestors
were my ancestors’ masters
and scarred their backs heavily
were the ones ripping apart families
for profit or pleasure or both.

these teachers are also the ones that say
if we don’t learn from our history,
we are doomed to repeat it.
doomed for one community
to merely exist as footholds
because of the color of their skin again?

I want to laugh at these white women.
loudly. in their faces. and cry.
they are doing this. now.
and don’t realize it, don’t see our children
as more than poor, slang-speaking,
pant-hanging thugs.

why bring an anger they already have to a boil?
the anger is in our dna. the anger is in my blood.
we black people don’t need no reminders. never have,
all we need is conversation with our grandmothers to re-live it.
and our children don’t need to be auctioned off
even in jest, in “well-meaning” dialogue.

sell your white kids, then. we not property
nor playthings. we people.
do not forget this
in the haste to dehumanize the black body
to break black boys.

Don’t worry—our children will learn their history
of pain and adversities and truth
but not like that.

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Ashley Elizabeth is a writing consultant, teacher, and poet. Her works have appeared in Bonnie's Crew, yell/shout/scream, and Zoetic Press, among others. She has a chaplet, letters from an old mistress, with Damaged Goods Press. When Ashley isn't serving as assistant editor at Sundress Publications, she habitually posts on Twitter and Instagram (@ae_thepoet).