They all laughed.

Eyes wide as dinner plates,

Or squeezed tighter together

Than packed sardines,

They all laughed from the belly,

Lips curled back,

Showing the pale ochre

Of crooked and jagged teeth.

They were keelin’ over,

Shakin’ and hee-hawin’,

Thigh smackin’ and knee slappin’.

Tears were wiped clean through

Weathered crow’s feet.

God forbid a single one

Rolls down a man’s cheek.

They all laughed—

All except me.

“What, you ain’t think it’s funny?”

I turn to, slow like.

“Yeah. It’s . . . hilarious.”

Postures stiffened

And haunches raised.

“What’re you tryna say?”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

I throw up my palms

And empty a chuckle.

“It is funny, isn’t it?”

Would you do it yourself, then?

Crack the bull whip

Until the darker skin gives way

And the red shines through?

Would you strike them

To the unforgiving dirt,

Where you know they belong?

Would you continue

After bones splintered,

Joints failed, and frayed nerves

Could only tremble?

Would you take the blood

Unto your own hands?

Would you say that laughing,

Standing before the judgement

Of your own God?

Would you even stop

If they were broken

And offered to betray their own?

Or would you humiliate the mothers

Before their innocent children?

Would you rape the underage daughters,

Then sodomize the underage sons?

Would you smear your own shit

On their writings and art?

Would you burn their farms and villages,

Then drag them from their homes,

Wrap nooses around their necks,

And hoist them swinging

From the branches—

Clawing, gagging, and pissing—

As a judge reads off their crimes,

Recanting the charges

Of being born into this life?

In armed packs of threes,

Would you hunt the young men

And messily hack at their spines

Until their horrified expressions

Rolled from the shoulders,

Spilling dark claret

Through the rotting leaves,

Down in the ditch

With the others?

Would you wrap the last one up

With barbed wire,

Tight enough

That it tore the flesh,

Then violate his asshole bloody

With rusted iron rebar,

And finally leave his leaking husk

Tied to a tree in a forest of horse flies,

To be eaten slowly alive

Screaming on a muggy summer night,

Helpless, tortured, and terrified?

“Oh, is that right?”

I figured you would.