"This Has Always Been Our Active Shooter Drill" by Jason Reynolds

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend July 31, 2018   This Has Always Been Our Active Shooter Drill   Jason Reynolds

(for Stephon Clark's grandmother)   shave your face. a haircut even. kiss your kids. your partner. your parents. tell them you listened. you kissed their asses like you were taught. kissed their asses and still. walk. or run. don't matter. glue your identification to your forehead. wrap yourself in the flag. hand over heart. hit the high note. hide your slang under your tongue. delete your profile. scrub the net. clean your blood. prepare your body for peepholes no one will ever peer into.                Copyright © 2018 Jason Reynolds. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "'This Has Always Been Our Active Shooter Drill' is a poem that comments on the dissonance between the active shooter drills children all over America are forced to carry out in the event of a school shooter and the often futile drill that black parents execute with their children (even once they become adults) to hopefully protect them from abusive police officers who identify them as targets and not as people." —Jason Reynolds   Jason Reynolds is the author of For Every One and Sunny, both published by Simon & Schuster this year. He lives in Washington, D.C. Poetry by Reynolds   For Every One (Atheneum Books, 2018) "Nightstick [A Mural for Michael Brown]" by Kevin Young "Hoodie" by January Gill O'Neil "Speak Now, Or Forever. Hold Your Peace." by Patricia Smith July Guest Editor: Adrian Matejka   Thanks to Adrian Matejka, author of Map to the Stars (Penguin Press, 2017), who curated Poem-a-Day this month. Read more about Matejka and our guest editors for the year. Help Support Poem-a-Day   If you value Poem-a-Day, please consider a monthly donation or one-time gift to help make it possible. Poem-a-Day is the only digital series publishing new, previously unpublished work by today's poets each weekday morning. The free series, which also features a curated selection of classic poems on weekends, reaches 450,000+ readers daily. Thank you! Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038