Today, Eleanor Wachtel, posted an interview with Jericho Brown who won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for poetry several months ago. He read his poem “Bullet Points” from his book, “The Tradition”.
When I wrote the poem, I was thinking about the supposed suicides of people of colour while in police custody. People like Jesus Huerta in North Carolina, who, after having been handcuffed on the walk from the police cruiser to the building where he was to be booked, somehow managed to shoot himself in the back of his own head; Victor White III in Louisiana, who, while handcuffed sitting in the backseat of a police cruiser, somehow managed to shoot himself in his upper back; Sandra Bland in Texas, who hung herself with a trash bag in a cell where there’s video footage of her — and then suddenly there’s technical difficulty and the video goes out at the moment that she supposedly hung herself with a trash bag. I wrote the poem, quite honestly, to my mother, and thinking about my mother. Because if I’m ever found dead in police custody, I would want people to know, I want my family to know, that I hadn’t killed myself. The poem suggests that if I do kill myself, you won’t have to wonder. I won’t leave you in a situation where you have to wonder if I did so in police custody. That’s how the poem came to be.
Jericho Brown talking about his poem, Bullet Points” on “Writers and Company” June 5, 2020
I found Bullet Points being read by Jericho Brown on YOUTUBE in Berkley, California, June 5, 2020. I would listen to the podcast first to hear his comments in full but if you don’t have time to do that now. Listen to this YouTube video.
On the podcast, Writer’s and Company, he was asked by Eleanor about the George Floyd video:
George Floyd’s video was traveling around and I was doing everything in my power to avoid it. But I ended up seeing a picture of this police officer with his hands in his pockets kneeling on this man’s neck. The United States is a police state: You can see a police officer kneeling on a man’s neck. You can be recording it and you can tell the police officer, ‘I think he’s dying.’ “You can’t do anything to help the person who is being murdered right in front of you because you risk your own life in doing so. So you have no choice but to witness a murder. You have no choice but to video the fact of the murder occurring, but you can’t actually do anything to stop the murder because the police are welcome to do whatever they please. A lot of people keep talking about the fact that George Floyd died. But I like to think about what life would be like if he hadn’t died. We know they’re welcome to do whatever they please because this particular officer did this in a completely brazen fashion. I mean, his hands were in his pockets! Like nothing was going on. Like there wasn’t a man dying under him. And the police officer clearly understood or believed that he would be protected no matter what.”
Jericho Brown, “Writers and Company” with Eleanor Wachtel. June 7, 2020
PS. As I write this post, I use Grammarly, an app that helps me clear up typos and grammar issues. It has a new beta feature that detects how “your text sounds”, as in tones of sad, confident, worried, direct, bullseye, informal, friendly. I guess the inference is if you don’t want to sound like any of those things, or you do, you’ll find this emoji helpful. Grammarly rated the quotes from Jericho Brown as “sad” with a yellow emoji with a downturned mouth.
I’d rate it as a bullseye. I’d rate it as truth. And, the fact that I am a 75-year-old white woman who somehow is still shaken and shocked by this? Well, pitiful comes to mind. But, that’s too weak a commentary. There’s a choice I’ve made all these years to look and, definitely, not to dwell on these indisputable facts. I still don’t want to. I hear myself already, “Oh, I’m too old.” “I’m too tired and run over by events.” Look no further. This is what white privilege sounds like.
Bullseye.
