Your Loss

By Sydney Johnson

began this unnumbing 

from the countless who look like you 

and I 

black angels in concrete 

whose guilt came before innocence 

in the eyes of 

each false god 

who holds the heft of a 

wooded hammer

let my words ring true that I’ll remember 

your poems

even in their unfinishing—

ran unflinching 

etching love down my brain 

in a world where blackness 

equates our ending 

let imam khalifah marcellus williams bring unbounded light