Sean Johnson | Jordan Edwards Calls Shotgun | Poets Resist

From a young age, Sean Johnson developed an insatiable love for the written and spoken word and has performed throughout the country. Sean has had art work and poetry published in 29 anthologies worldwide, and in 2014 her poem “Rearview Mirror” was nominated for The Pushcart Prize in Poetry. All My Heroes Were Assassinated is her first full length collection with two of its poems nominated for “Best of the Best” by Edify Fiction and Lunch Ticket, and she was recently nominated for Texas Poet Laureate. In addition to her poetic endeavors, she is also a painter, teacher, rock star auntie, and humanitarian known for her monthly homeless outreach, disaster relief program, and mission work in Africa.

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Also by Sean Johnson: All My Heroes Were Assassinated

Poets Resist
Edited by Michael Carter
August 23, 2019

Sean Johnson

Jordan Edwards Calls Shotgun

it’s a rite of passage, it’s a thing we do in our America picture a Black boy, endless and innocent and doing exactly what teenage White boys do in their movies and everywhere they go because the whole world is their after party except Jordan Edwards did it less drunk and without privilege I imagine he opened the passenger side door and climbed in like any teenage boy would do when it’s time to leave a place with no thoughts that leaving a place could mean leaving this place how could Jordan not know he was a celebrity? Did he think he could ride along unnoticed when emergency vehicle lights constantly play the role of paparazzi in the drama of Black lives? Jordan called, “Shotgun,” and Roy Oliver heard gunshots. Are you ready for your close up, lil’ black boy? I’ve captured you at an interesting angle, if you can even judge an angle when three rifle rounds make a beeline for a 15 year old skull there aren’t even six degrees of separation in these acute situations black boys being shot down occurs so often, the world believes murder is an American custom complete with its own canary colored streamers if his dreams were not spread across his brother’s cheeks, perhaps tonight even Jordan would be sitting front row for this parade, a spectator to the baptism in blood of another young Black Boy but he’s not here now, all his hopes as silent as a subpoena it’s exhausting, to scroll these crossword headlines and find that despite what you’ve been taught in school, there is a You in collateral Black boy, don’t be arrogant enough to think your mama’s prayers will save you, don’t get comfortable with the idea of permanence you’ve got a special kind of brilliance, it is the envy of every cop’s bullets and you know how easy it is for them to find you when you’re riding shotgun