Becoming criminal
we let it slide
when you said we couldn’t turn left
at that junction
and we couldn’t turn right
we let it slide
when you picked us up for walking on the high-
way and again, for walking on the side-
walk. We let it slide when
you hit us
with a fine. Fine,
we let it slide
when we got beaten
shitless and you stood idly by,
when you caught the thief
and offered us the once-in-a-life-
time chance to beat
him as he stood tied
helpless. We let it slide,
turned our eyes inside-blind
when you made our little sister cry
burnt tears,
blood, we let it slide
when you held our brother
by the throat
until he choked
out and died.
We let it slide
when we finally tried
to make a sound but
you had each other’s back and lied.
We let it slide.
Even now we let it slide.
But who am I
to complain? I knew
your state of mind, I knew
your pre-cleared crimes
when I gave
you the job.
Roy Duffield is a writer, poet and translator from the working class, and an editor over at Anti-Heroin Chic, a journal that puts those on the outside inside. He is a winner of the Robert Allen Micropoem Contest (2021), was honoured to be chosen to read his work at the 2019 Beat Literary Festival in Barcelona, and his words have recently been spotted entering such nefarious establishments as Into the Void, Untitled: Voices, Flights, and The London Reader's issue on Counterculture. Roy recommends EMERGENCY.
