[Critique Group 1] reminder pieces are due tomorrow

[tuchyner5 at aol.com]

Hi group 1,

Just a reminder. If you have not gotten your piece in yet, it is due tomorrow. Mine is attached and pasted below.

Leonard
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Lines: 45 including title and spaces


 



 


 Throne ofResponsibility



              

             The Question




 


You say I owe reparations 

for wickedness done long ago.

What did I ever do to you?


 


                Response 




 


You stole us from our home lands,

packed us into cargo ships,

like so many un-named sardines,

to rot and die in body filth,

then tried to take away our names,

told us we were slaves, not people,

that had no claim to family,

said it was the loving will of God.

You raped us and enslaved our children.


 


When legal slavery was repealed,

you put us down or hung us up,

as we struggled to escape the swamp

that mired us in poverty,

while you prospered in the wealth we built.


 


But what has this got to do with me?

I was not there. I did you no harm.


 


I speak from my place of privilege,

ensconced in a home made upon that throne,

and I am forced to remember that

I’ve chosen this culture of privilege,

knowing of all its perks and evils.


 


Though I was not there,

though I did not enslave

or lynch,

or rape,


 


If I do not redress the evils upon which my success in partlies,

am I not condoning the atrocities my throne stands upon?

This throne of privilege must also be a throne of burden,

lest this chair, on which I sit, be bristled with poison thorns.

And what will be my sentence in the halls of justice?


 

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