The year Rosa Parks sat on a bus in the wrong place, in the wrong time
just in time. The year the eyes of your neighbors glared down at you, looked
down at you, cross-legged, on a lunch counter, in the posture of Gandhi.
The year you scraped the spit of a good Christian woman off your face and prayed to
a thorned Christ. The year you screamed calmly of action––with heels like nails at your throat.
The year you dreamed of the content of your character and his and hers and ours.
The year hooded men and fellow clergymen scratched out in history,
in remembrance of you.
~ Marq Wilson
Marq Wilson received her MFA in Creative Writing from Arizona State University in 2009. She received the Virginia G. Piper Writing Fellowship in 2008. She completed a Master of Arts degree in English literature at The Pennsylvania State University in May 2012. Her original interview, “‘A Push out of Chaos’: An Interview with Sapphire,†appeared last December 2012 in the MELUS literary journal. Her poetry has also appeared in Toe Good Poetry. Wilson currently lives in State College, Pennsylvania.
Artwork: Misery by Marta Święcek
