Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?

In 1992 Los Angeles erupted into riots
Latasha Harlins was murdered by a Korean shopkeeper.

She was fifteen. Her murderer served time,
unlike the white cops who beat Rodney King

Which tells you everything
you need to know about white privilege.

I was in my freshman year of college
watching the riots on television in my dorm.

My closest friend was from South Central LA
Yet it still didn’t feel real, at least not to me.

The shock that can only come
from realizing you’re white,
no matter how othered
you’ve been as a Jew, as a queer.

You’ve been living under a rock
while black people look at that rock

in envy: Rocks are a good place
to hide or can be weapons to throw.

Twenty-eight years later
Minneapolis police murder a black man,

after St Louis police,
after Staten Island police,

after state troopers in Texas,
after state troopers in South Carolina.

Our whole country erupted.

Enough is enough,
White people finally said.
Black people shaking their heads:
What took you so long?

Eve Lyons

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Eve Lyons is a poet and fiction writer living in the Boston area. Her work has appeared in Lilith, Literary Mama, Hip Mama, PIF, Welter, Prospectus, Poetry Quarterly, Barbaric Yawp, Word Riot,  Dead Mule of Southern Literature, as well as other magazines, and several anthologies. Her first book of poetry, Tikkun Olam: Repairing the World, was published in May of 2020 by WordTech Communications. She works as an expressive arts therapist at an outpatient mental health clinic and teaches at Lesley University.

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