Vincent Berquez: Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks

She told a big white man
a big no right in his face.
Nose to nose and quite scary
as if a lynching could result.
She didn’t flinch and said
she could’ve
and should’ve
be able to do this
one easy thing that day.
There she sat, little and grand,
and although she was the first
to sit on a bus in the white seats
she was bayed at as if this symbol
was like rejecting the public stocks.
This small piece of America
became everything,
a wave began and was unstoppable.
I don’t know much else about all this
but I am interested in my liberty.
She could have said it like that.

21.03.04

Vincent Berquez

Vincent Berquez is a London–based artist and poet

fleursdumal.nl magazine

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