I will never call a Latino “papi”

sino héroe, soldado, sobreviviente

Brother in bondage, sibling in survival

The chains of the Hispanic clink with those of his Black cellmate

We languish under the same white gall

Asian men rattle wire fences in

1930s internment camps

White supremacists live

On Black-tilled land

One day the bank

Of social justice will

Foreclose

Repossess

Reclaim ownership

Til then

We languish

Like the pain

Filling up a four-year-old boy’s gaze at the colorful toy store

“Niggers not served here”

“Chinese go home”

“Jews have no place”

Like the swastika carved into the plastic tabletop

In my school

Filled with kids who cheered

When a white supremacist won the highest office in the nation

Like the time I learned my melanin somehow

Brought down the property value

Three girls

Sit

In a line

On the curb

Chins in hand

Their various brown-shaded skins

Sag

Under the weight

Of White beauty standards

We tried

We will build a land

Already watered by

The blood of black, brown bodies

By the tears of our great-grandmothers

And the screams of our sisters

As our bodies swung from the trees

And were lost forever in the river

We are bonded in struggle

Woven together by oppression

It is a grim unity

And yet

We rise in it

We are made bold by it

We fight

In spite

Of “progress”

Because the knife driven into our backs

Has not even been pulled out six inches yet

We will move past the red, white, blue

Dye our emblem red, yellow, green

Black, brown, purple

A heritage to be proud of

One unified

In struggle