Green Streets

a poem about the Greenwood District, scene of the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921

Sweet green streets
gave us everything we ever needed
Sheltered us as we built on their backs
Cradled us as we traded 
And made for ourselves an oasis
In a desert place

Sweet green dreams 
Fueled our banks and businesses
Kept us close 
Hand to hand
Home to home
We claimed our corners and our plots.
Didn’t ask
just built.
didn’t borrow 
outside our city blocks.
Worked together to solve the problems
that seemed like mountains then
but now we know were only footstools.

We forgot to place a gate,
forgot to enlist a militia,
didn’t think to hide our streets of green and gold
behind curtains of vibranium.

These green streets,
When we trained and named them,
Had been taken from no one,
Weren’t given to us as a gift,
so it was easy to forget
that autonomy could be rescinded.

Ancient spirits have descended on new bodies
their jeweled crowns were melted down,
their robes have burn holes
and reek of smoke.
the embers have left
flecks of charred flesh
where black gold used to shine so smoothly.

Sweet green streets
Live on in charred memory.
Ancestral spirits’ descent 
Manifests in the writer’s pen
Hovers over museum and monument
Melts into the colors of graffiti 
Flies free outside the boundaries 
Of land we no longer own,
Laments our green and gold.