police

glanced her tongue & saw blade

conjured gun

from the cockiness

of her throat dare breathe

saw vertebrae of her quaking spine

/ grenade keys
 
mistook her words

as / gunpowder

every

blink

a

/ trigger

she

pregnant ticking

/ bomb.
seattle police call this nightmare-making

“Training Policy”

(using a taser “wasn’t protocol”.

“hands on approach” would have

“put them at risk”

pepper spray was “tactically counterproductive”

could have endangered

the officer’s ability

to

breathe.)


“There was no viable alternative,”

department says,

besides twisting her body — black & alive —

into a banshee
a black woman’s body

is always gleaned more weapon

than mother

as if nothing

can harvest here but

husks of babies

& bullets.
Charleena Lyle’s knife last seen:

cutting the ribbon on Inauguration Day of Seattle’s new mayor

whose glass-ceiling womanhood

— like her title “trailblazer” —

is also steeped in whiteness.
Charleena’s knife last seen:

cutting the limestone of this

Glittering Republic

skyscraper

by

skyscraper

headstones in a city she might

have once called hers

but would never hug

her back
Charleena’s knife last seen:

haunting the guilt of officers & a city too infatuated

with its own reflection

to see her

gleaming in the corners of

their Trumped-up nightmares.
Seattle,

after all,

only has so much patience

for those who are black and angry

trauma longer than a soundbite

and a week of headlines
“how awful they must feel,” someone pale & alive tells me,

“to have killed someone by mistake. To have to live with that.”

police brutality ain’t supposed to happen here, right?

not in this safe space city

its liberals are so heartbroken.

too bad their bleeding hearts don’t feed justice, just-stain hands.

too bad their guilt never makes it to the courthouses, somehow.

“too bad” “too bad” too bad”

Charleena’s knife last seen:

cutting umbilical cord of

uniformed men

babied by a society that will always

call their fist an open palm

who will never teach them how to pronounce

a c c o u n t a b i l i t y

in front of a mirror
“maybe they feel guilty,

but she’s still dead,” I say.

Missing Persons Report for the Words I Did Not Say:

I CAN’T MAKE IT

THROUGH AN ARTICLE ABOUT THE SHOOTING

WITHOUT CRYING


THE SOBS BEATING MY CHEST

FEEL LIKE GUNSHOTS


Last seen:

shattering every,

heart of glass
 
& blood too dark

to bring up at dinner.

GUESS WHAT?

YOU’RE REELING FROM THE KICKBACK OF A GUN

YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW YOU SHOT.


Charleena Lyles is still dead.

Seattle thrives & she is still dead.

Mayor sharpens her reputation on her headstone at the MLK rally & she is still dead
 
Police try holding her knife

up to a mirror

it shrivels into ash

yet she is still dead.
she is still dead.

she is still dead.
Azura Tyabji is our February Poet in Residence.