I saw Hope begging for Change at the corner

Wide-eyed with a buckled stance and a tin cup,

Hoping that life will gift her with Change

But Hope never asked for money and dollars

Only for possibilities.

Packaged in metal coins

That never found space in her pocket.

 

I saw Hope begging for Change at the corner

 

I was begging for Change at the corner

Distilled with centuries of racial violence

Yet still Hoping for a better tomorrow

Since the beginning 2 letters of HOpe—-H and O

Means Hell and O my God

But shhh!!!

Don’t say another word.

For every call for help

Is a battle for freedom

But Change

Is coming to show what humanity 

Really looks like

Packaged in the original image of Eve

Black-skinned

Covering the invisible scars

That is unapologetically me

Praying for Change

 

I saw Hope begging for Change at the corner

They call me Change

Because of my infinite possibilities

Mama said if you can match Intellect with social justice  and time

I will be born

But I have never really been welcomed

In this world where Change means justice for all

Cuz justice for all means

Living  a similar life

For the same amount of time

With the same stigmata

And we all know that justice has never really been for all

But I am still

Expecting

To bring Change

So they named me for Hope

 

I saw Hope begging for Change at the corner

 

Hope, at the corner,

An unseen humanity with a lost voice

She holds a placard, her face a mother

Nine months in the present and even Sam Cooke’s

♬ A change is gonna come ♬

Can’t get empathetic professionals to bother

 

She already understands,

No struggle, no progress

She’s walking, but there’s no movement.

She has the anti-pandemic–racist, covid, Black death.

 

She’s looking for Change in the heart that cares for hearts

Humanitarians, astronomers, and ethnographers for the space of our future

With telescopic eyes for a vision of perfection that is exclusive

High on disdain but low on inclusivity,

There’s a deficiency that makes them hear

Her scream for attention

As a scream for attention.

So, all rooms in the History Hospital are taken

Except for the ones for disrespect and ignorance.

 

Though she bears the Change we have been expecting.

Security of a status quo escorts Hope out.

She moves with the breathlessness of a mother about to give birth.

 

The sanctity of pregnancy is left at the curb of injustice

As Hope experiences the inequity of being…

Black, Woman, Mother, and Child

 

I saw Hope begging for Change at the corner

 

Twenty-four hours of labor

In Blackness

Hoping to naturally deliver Change

But the pain was too intense

So, I surrendered to anesthesia

 

Contraction numbed but not blind.

Hands out, fisted

With legs open

Begging for Change

Stilled but very vocal

Pushing against the time

Apgar 1 minute

Hoping to change a dollar

To ten at 5 minutes

Standing alone on the precipice of

 

Change,

Oppression will not be your play gym

There will be no Legos

Or imaginary building blocks

That confines us to silence

No Barbie dolls or

Wolverine figurines

Miming a make-believe hero

When Hope is standing right before you

 

As my uterus ruptures

The blood-stained bills

Will only cash out the effect

without any account for the cause

That they don’t respond to us

Unless our bodies are already unresponsive

 

But I saw Change

Looking at me for the first time

As if my name was etched on the corner

But I am just Hope

Delivering a deliverance

Standing on the corner

Begging for Change

 

I saw Hope begging for Change at the corner

 

I am Change

I am the Change that you Hoped for

When men’s hands are bound

Shackled to the Ugliness

Cemented to the ground

I am the Change that comes

 

I am the water that has melted from ice

I am the heated combustion of H-2-O

That transforms into fire

I am the grapes left in the heat

That becomes a raisin in the sun

I am the reminder

That racism is a habit

So I’ll never let you forget

About your addiction

 

I am the Great Lakes

Not easily formed when glaciers melt

I am the deep wounds

Borrowing upon time to granulate

I am the timely thrombolytics

That breaks pulmonary clots

I am the intravenous magnesium

An anti-eclamptic stabilizer of the brain

I am the vigilance

Post VBAC that will diagnose the rupture

Just in time

Because

I am Change

 

A nickel minus

A penny four your thoughts

I add up 

In a tin cup

For Hope

Where she stands on the corner

Wide-eyed with a buckled stance

Drifting

I Hope 4 Change

Remembering that

 

I saw Hope begging for Change at the corner

~by Princess E. Dennar, MD