on meeting your biological mother
the pigs busted my skull in / says her fiancé / in the 80’s / apparently Minneapolis was worse / or un-filmed / was what he called / undocumented / you tracing the edge of everything / how the globe of her eyes late dialect / she teaching you everything bout the grammar of body / he mentions something / how they didn’t bother beatin you then takin you to the precinct cuz questions / and you can’t give your tongue the gift of reasonable doubt thats definitely yo mama. They just gave out tickets / in silence everything is an opportunity for a joke / why did the police cross the road / she mentions surgery /of course / wouldn’t be a black woman in the midwest without something needing to be sliced open / Do unarmed black men kill themselves / in eye contact everything is an opportunity. most cases of brutality aint go to trail / you get ice water no one asked for / the police do home visits for victims who aint forget the name of the officer/ by the garden you take the first family photo in over 20 years / they expected you not to remember who did this to you
Keno Evol is the founder and executive director of www.BlackTableArts.com, an arts based org centered on conjuring other worlds through black art by connecting creatives and cultivating volume in Black Life. Evol is a six year educator having taught at nineteen institutions across the state of Minnesota. Evol teaches Black Voices at Washburn through TruArtSpeaks, a non profit in St Paul dedicated to cultivating literacy, leadership and social justice through the study and application of spoken word and Hip Hop culture. He is currently an editor at The Loft Literary Center Manuscript Critique Services, has received numerous grants and competed nationally as a spoken word artist.