This poem is part of the special section, New Poems of U.S. History, reflecting on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence selected by editors Carolivia Herron, Summer Tate, and Robert Bettmann. You can read more about the section on the Day Eight website here.

After the flash
the shock
the fury
a vast and beautiful darkness
a wing-ed silence
that has fluttered now and then
at the corner of my eye
then flown away
leaving me
to bear the bitter jangle of my lot.

feel my pain feel my pain
my own mother don’t give a damn
I got money on my mind
and I ain’t got the time
tryin’ a nickel and a dime
just to make a rhyme

I always was a sensitive boy
Big Mike: stone trap rapper
straight out of Ferguson.
writing lyrics on scraps of paper
the way they came into my head
and storing them in a jar
at my grandma’s house.

Don’t move me, don’t move me
let me lie here where I fell
on the cold hard ground
let the sun burn my flesh.
let the birds drink my blood.
this is where I’m from.

when the sun goes down
on my side of town
well you in trouble now
devil get up off my back
break it down bag it up
feel my pain
feel my pain

How peaceful to be
as big as the sky
but who knew such peace
could only come to me this way?
a walk down the street
a pack of cigarillos
I took to calm my nerves
I heard that god don’t make mistakes
and one day the whole world
is gonna’ know my name.

feel my pain
feel my pain.
feel my pain
feel my pain.

Bernardine (Dine) Watson is a writer who lives in Washington, D.C. Dine’s book “Transplant: A Memoir,” won the 2023 Washington Writers’ Publishing House (WWPH) prize for nonfiction. Also, in 2023 Transplant was chosen as one of National Public Radio’s “books we love” and featured in Poets and Writers Magazine as part of their “5 writers over 50” feature. Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals. In 2023, two of Dine’s poems were nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Dine is a board member of the Washington Writers’ Publishing House.

Featured image Susanne Nilsson, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons