How to Pray for Black Men
Lydia Mulkey
April 13, 2021
Today the news is rolling in about Daunte Wright. He was shot and killed by a police officer during a traffic stop on Sunday afternoon. Another black man killed. How awful that word sounds today, “another.” We have marched about this. We have voted about this. We have worked and worked. We have prayed. How can we possibly keep praying about this? How do we find the words to pray for yet “another?”
I share this poem, “How to Pray for Black Men” by Marvin K. White because I am desperately looking for a way to pray. Maybe you are too.
How to Pray for Black Men
Pray as if you are that black boy.
Pray as if you are the bullet.
Pray as if you are tomorrow waiting on him.
Pray as if you are that black boy’s mama.
Then pray as if you are that whiteness.
Pray as if you are the witness.
Pray as if you are the curtain through which his killing is witnessed.
Pray as if you are the ground he fell on.
Pray as if you are the blood trying to get away.
Then pray as if you are daylight savings time.
Pray as if you got to break the news to his son.
Pray as if you got to watch the news break.
Pray as if you are the scripture that speaks healing.
Pray as if you can hear black boys crying even when they are not.
Then pray as if you know that even God don’t know what to say to this.
Pray as if you know people think praying people right up there with looters.
Pray as if you are listening for justice.
Pray as if you can’t hear none.
Pray as if you black and thinking locked up is safer than jay-walking.
Then pray that no lies about black boys get past you.
Pray as if you are a funeral service.
Pray as if you are the money for a spray.
Pray as if you meet a florist who hates funerals.
Pray as if you know quiet hours can’t keep you quiet much longer.
Then pray that the cops don’t say that they thought your clasped hands was a gun.
This poem was published in Prayers of Justice and Hope: A Child Laughs, eds. Maria Mankin and Maren C. Tiribassi
