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Quraysh Ali Lansana
Quraysh Ali Lansana is author of twenty books of poetry, nonfiction and children’s literature. He is a Tulsa Artist Fellow, Writer in Residence and Adjunct Professor at Oklahoma State University-Tulsa. Lansana is executive producer of KOSU/NPR’s Focus: Black Oklahoma, and his forthcoming titles include Those Who Stayed: Life in 1921 Tulsa After the Massacre and Opal’s Greenwood Oasis. He is a member of Tri-City Collective.
morgue
it’s 3am. nine hundred corpses
in this nation yesterday & thursday
is a newborn. dawn a long way
from here. death grinds the wind
close. no one i knew yet. personal
pathology: the same weekend trayvon’s
murder went national (two weeks
later) a baby girl gunned in daddy’s
gangsta arms. westside chi. asked students
why rev. jesse & rev. al in sanford
not lawndale. it was about race.
killing a two-year-old not about race?
if it’s not me or mine we don’t care.
on the daily in our homes counting
body bags like blessings.
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