Chet Hanks Explains How, if You Think About it, We’re All Africans
by Simone Person
and smiles a poplar-teeth chorus. with a sawed-off stare,
he adorns us queen, as in Black, as in his. names it admiration,
a burnt-cork offering, says if we’re smart, we’ll take it.
before he loses interest. his reminder of what he’s culled,
that everything we call ours is ripening into taken.
a howling aubade signaling the beginning
of the hunt. chet blesses himself righteous architect,
ready to ravage everything not of his body.
he explains slaughter is his birthright.
whiteboy as puddle-deep, as gaunt manifestation of god,
he says he’s got a legacy to carry. vulgar’s in his blood,
and he’s always liked that word—blood. how easy it is to find,
so abundant, a dulled gospel just waiting beneath skin.
ABOUT THE CREATOR
Simone Person is a Black queer femme, two-time Pink Door Writing Retreat fellow, and managing editor at just femme & dandy. They are the author of Dislocate (Honeysuckle Press, 2018) and Smoke Girl (Diode Editions, 2019), and they were selected as a first-place winner of Boston Review’s 2021 Annual Poetry Contest by Sonia Sanchez. Simone grew up in small Michigan towns and Toledo, Ohio. They can be found at simoneperson.com and on Twitter/Instagram at @princxporkchop.