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I Turn the Volume Down Because Beyoncé Says Fuck in the Car While I Drive My Daughter to School
by William Evans

the four-year-old                  gives her              first

            protest of the   morning                whether intentional

            or the default position of her mother's resolve

her fist is balled in              the way a boy would          grip her  hair
 
              in a   kindergarten class or                at any age that    boys

               put                         their        names  on things

she says, hey I   like       that song and Beyoncé has         already finished
 
              saying                  I'm gonna fuck me up a bitch                          so

               I turn the             volume back up                to five seconds                 ago

before a father                 once told a Black woman she was                too loud to         

            fill        his daughter's lungs      before the        tabernacle

            of mist filled the               car until all we   knew to               breathe  was

gunsmoke        and the ire of   men  interrupting  the choir     of crows
 
              that               ain't meant for                  their ears             and I        know

               it doesn't                             take much          to get this little                  girl's blood

​into      a spell  because it was once                       her              grandmother's

               blood                    which    means                                  there will             be

               a                   day when            someone             some man              tries to pull      it            

out of   her       and      she becomes a wound                  where the curses             her
 
           father hid         from  her come                 tumbling  out of                  the     

​            same

​tomb    where   she once buried a         woman with a too        quiet    face


William Evans is a writer from Columbus, OH and the founder of the Writing Wrongs Poetry Slam (September 2008). In addition to being the Editor-in-Chief of Blacknerdproblems.com, William has published two collections of poetry on Penmanship Books. He has been published or has poems forthcoming in joint literary journal, Winter Tangerine, Radius, Union Station Magazine, Freezeray Poetry, and other online publications.

 
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​Fall 2016, Issue 19
ISSN 2157-8079
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