I will remember you,
Sean Monterrosa.
I will remember you
for what you are:
A carpenter.
I will remember you
for what you are:
like me, another Latino in the U.S.A.
Those who work,
those who harvest,
those who teach,
those who build.
Those who use tools
mistaken as weapons
by the Vallejo PD
who see us kneeling with a hammer
protruding from our pockets,
and with a lack of critical thinking,
kill us, and justify it by
describing us as
“potential looting suspects whom
officers believed were carrying firearms.”
Five shots through a windshield.
All for what?
We’ve heard this story before.
It wasn’t a firearm.
Of course it wasn’t a firearm.
It was actually a 15-inch hammer.
A hammer.
The same hammer you used
to build other people’s houses,
to build generational wealth.
And on that day, to build a resistance.
I will remember your hammer as a tool.
Because you knew – like I do too –
that without the fire and brimstone
endured by Black people
we wouldn’t be here today.
For it was their action that led to:
The Immigration Act
The Civil Rights Act.
The Voting Rights Act.
I’m glad you, Sean, also went to act.
I will remember you for what you are.
A carpenter with a hammer.
But the point is, that you just are. I didn’t know you.
But I know you didn’t deserve to die.
A lover of reading.
The guy who was
always trying
to get his best friend
to read more.
I know that guy because I am that guy, too.
I will read your name, Sean.
And I will remember it.
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Camilo Garzón is a Colombian American poet and journalist based in the East Bay Area. He is a managing editor for Poets Reading the News. His work has been featured – or is forthcoming – in on-off.site, Nomadic Press, Brushing, Rollins College’s The Independent, Revista Cultural Días Temáticos, among others.
Photo via the family’s Gofundme.
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