📃 Daily(ish) poem → 00357 ◊ Racists in Space ◊ Ashley M. Jones
Racists in Space
”Nobody wants to go back to that crazy racist life.”
”No, nobody wants to go back to riding a horse and buggy.”
”No, we not going back to that. People trying to go to space.”
—pulled from a conversation with my parents
Meet George Jetson—his Klan robe is made of supersonic polyester—-Jane, his wife, bakes space cookies for Mr. Spacely, the Grand Space Dragon. They host dinner parties, and Rosie the Negrobot sings the old cotton songs.
A space joke: How many niggers does it take to make a Spacely’s Sproket? None, cause ain’t no niggers in space. We left them in steamy Alabama, in the hills and trees of Virginia back on Earth.
Here, we breatne in little clear bubbles fastened around our necks. Curious, we think, these tourniquets that save our space-aged lives. Curious, we think—we used to fasten a bubble of air, a rope around a black man’s neck, called it a noose and waited till the air crackled out of his body. How much faster he’d implode in space, how quickly his body would turn inside out to greet the gaping black.
—Ashley M. Jones
—found in Terminus Magazine (2017; Issue 14)