YOUTH PORTFOLIO

Black History Month (As Told By My Spam Folder)

By DEESOUL CARSON  |  24 APR 2023

(text is formatted like an email inbox) (left aligned text) (checkbox) Hulu (right aligned text) The Revolution© will be live-streamed between Abbott Elementary and black·ish (left aligned text) (checkbox) Old Navy (right aligned text) Kente cloth & durags up to 40% off at Old Navy! (fist emojis of each skin color variation) (left aligned text) (checkbox) Unspecified Mag (right aligned text) [Exciting!] This Month Only: Black People in our Journal (left aligned text) (checkbox) WikiHow (star symbol) (right aligned text) [Urgent] 28 Ways to Apologize for Anti-Blackness Without Ever Using the Words Sorry or Apologize (left aligned text) (checkbox) PayPal (right aligned text) Send your reparations this Black History Month with Venmo (left aligned text) (checkbox) New York Times (star symbol) (right aligned text) #1 Bestseller: A Long History of Abuses(abridged for your comfort) (left aligned text) (checkbox) WikiHow (right aligned text) [Update] 28 Ways to Avoid calling Black People “Blacks” (left aligned text) (checkbox) UberEats (right aligned text) Emancipate your Pantry! Enter BLM4EVER for 3/5ths off your order (left aligned text) (checkbox) Serta (right aligned text) Martin had a Dream & so can you! New Memory Foam Mattress on sale now! (left aligned text) (checkbox) DNC (right aligned text) The Revolution© says #YouAintBlack if you don’t #VoteBlue this November (left aligned text) (checkbox) MTA (right aligned text) #RideLikeRosa on your local public transit today! (left aligned text) (checkbox) WikiHow (right aligned text) Fwd: 28 Ways to remember Blacks exist this month! No conversations selected New Message Draft

(the background text is the same as the previous image) (the new message draft tab is overlayed over the inbox) New Message Draft To: ???? Subject: How Do I Put It? My existence can be boiled down to a litany of companies trying to sell back to me their abuses. My freedom is conditional and therefore worth only as much as I'm willing to subscribe. My life cannot be bought but it can be marketed to. Question: If a Black person is alive but no one is around to profit off of them, do they make a sound? A different way: Can anyone hear me when I ask to be left alone? What are my wishes worth? Does the hand that feeds me reach out to smother me in my sleep? Does anyone see the hand? If it kills me, who lays claim to my bones? How much will it make them?

(Please click on the images and use the zoom function to read the poem. A transcript is available in the ALT text.)

DeeSoul Carson is a poet, performer, and educator from San Diego, CA. Their work is featured or forthcoming in Voicemail Poems, Narrative Mag, Hayden’s Ferry Review & elsewhere. He graduated with a degree in Cultural/Social Psychology and a minor in Creative Writing from Stanford University and is a Writer in the Public Schools Fellow in the NYU MFA program.

RELATED ARTICLES

YOUTH PORTFOLIO

Learn My Curls

By ERZSABET GONZALEZ

Call me by my name. Say it / with the familiarity and reverence / of a spoken prayer.

POETRY

On a Hot Night

By ALEX WATSON

our boy coiled in tenebrous cloak / at the sunrise window