Black Sweepers
Cleaning the streets of black people
Cleaning the parks of black people
Cleaning restaurants and cafes of black people
That’s what the cops are
Black sweepers
Kinda like street sweepers
But instead of discarding trash
Cops discard black people
Street sweepers are scheduled
The killings of black people have been scheduled
It’s scheduled when white people call the cops
When we’re sleeping
When we’re jogging
When we’re simply just
Breathing
When a white cop sees us
We don’t know
But we are on their schedule
So they sweep us
They sweep our brothers
Our friends
Our sons
Our daughters
Our sisters
Our mothers
And our fathers
Black sweepers can clean the streets
The cafes
The parks
But black voices
The black existence
Will never be swept
Black Lives
Voices were heard shouting and chanting as sirens and megaphones tried to drown them out. The blinds were still slightly open and bent from her constant viewing of outside. She was told not to look out “there”, the reality was just that. Outside was now considered “there”. Being 8 years old she saw what was happening but didn’t understand what was happening. As she got up to peer out her bedroom window, making sure she didn’t hear her parents walking by, she pressed her forehead on the window and looked out. She saw white cops, and black cops holding car windshields and black skinny sticks. The people who were shouting and chanting were mostly black, and when she listened closely, she could hear “no justice no peace” over and over. She saw the white cops beating up the people who were chanting, the cops would spray them right in their eyes and the chanters would cry out in pain. Sometimes she heard helicopters at night, she heard words that she knew she wasn’t allowed to say. The chaos has been happening for 4 days now. She knew what the chants were about; a black man who got shot by a white cop because he was in a nice neighborhood or in a “white neighborhood” as her dad told her. The black man wanted to take a quicker way home but the white cop said he was looking to rob the white people in the neighborhood and shot him as he got out of his car. She asked many questions and her dad did not have as many answers to follow up with. She was told to stay in the room and not to look out the window. But as she walked back to her bed she heard the front door open and voices filled the living room downstairs. She walked to her door and quietly opened it then crawled to the top of the stairs and looked down. There were 3 white cops standing in her house, they looked scary, dressed in all black with their window shields and sticks. Her dad was talking to them and all of a sudden one of the cops shoved her dad against the wall, she heard her mother cry out “stop what are you doing, no one is here but our daughter stop!”. The other two white cops began to beat her dad and she ran downstairs shouting and chanting “NO JUSTICE NO PEACE” at the top of her lungs as she heard from outside her window. The cops stopped beating her dad and told him to stay put and they’ll be back. After the 3 white cops left, her mom held her dad in her arms just like she holds her whenever she’s having a bad dream. Maybe this was all a bad dream or one long nightmare, she was called out of her thoughts when her mom asked her to get a wet cloth with ice for her dad’s bruises that were on his face and body. “Why did they come in and beat you?” she asked her dad while handing her mom the cloth filled with ice “hand me that sign over there” her dad pointed to a black poster with red lettering on a wooden stick. It was behind the tv and she handed it to him, her dad held it up as her mom moved the cloth off his face, he stood up cursing through the pain holding the sign up so it was facing her. The red letters read “Black Lives” she could now see the red letters were made to look like blood “black lives” she repeated “no, black lives, black lives whether they kill us all or not, black will always live because we are the most beautiful creation, we are the most influential people but yet we are hated for no reason. Our existence will always live before us and after us”. She grabbed the sign and held it in her hands, she then asked her parents if they could go out and shout with the other black people like them.
Tayler Hubbard is a 26 year old college student from Longview, Tx residing in Denton,Tx. She will be a junior at UNT in the fall studying health promotion.Her art was published in her schools publishing journal and her work was displayed for many to see. Tayler enjoys reading, writing poetry; short stories, and she also has a passion for photography and health.