their children wear our jerseys
[they race adjust our brains]1
they think we need attitude adjustment
they settle for statistical adjustment2
they can't control for justice
they can't control our edges
our knees (their knees)
[they race adjust our lungs]3–6
our hips (their hips)
our fists
our mouths
our lips on their daughters
their daughters on TikTok
their sons on sigs, glocks
their silence __________
_________
our matter
our matters
our mattering
[they race adjust our pain]7–9
they can't control our anger
they think they know our rage
they settle
they: settler
they: eyes
our streets
our parks
our schools
our playgrounds
our grounds
our play
our joy unfiltered
[they race adjust our blood]9–14
our names they don't pronounce
they squiggly red line our names
they redlined our streets
they raced to scrub our names
from rivers
from mountains
from lakes
from stars
from murals
[they race adjust our homes]15–17
they search to find our magic
our glow
our radiance
they say they do not see
they look right through us
[they race adjust our bones]18
their hands held the compass
the maps
the pens
the gavels
the glocks
the signs in Little Rock –
their children love our dances
their faces look the same
their cameras track our faces
their mothers don't feel safe
our mothers: open casket
our faces make front page
our fathers fit descriptions
our daughters go unfound
our sisters ain't Serena
[they race adjust our births]19–21
they say they ally
they say they here
they say they hear
they said that last year
they say they listen
to Kendrick
to Nina
to Toni
to Toni
to Audre
to James
to god
they love a soundtrack
they love to sound track
[they race adjust our cars?]22
they good intention
they good intention real good
they well mean
they racist bone-free
[they be tryin’ so hard]23–25
their hands are not clean
their hands wrote the code
our hands get cuffed in labor
our hands cannot get soap
our lungs cannot get oxygen
their algorithms rope†
their software comes with “bootstrap”
and that's all you need to know
Cite this article as: Petteway RJ (2023) Z60.5/(en)coded, Health Equity 7:1, 790–792, DOI: 10.1089/heq.2023.0033.
“Rope” is a technical term for a type of data structure, usually a (binary) “tree” data structure… Go figure.
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