#BlaPoWriMo: Dear Apathetic Voter

Burning crosses staked
into the backs of ancestors
by elected officials hooded
in cotton sheets.

The illiterate turned away,
signature nothing more than an X.
Mothers in servitude,
fathers three-fifths
of a white man.

Laws passed to keep them in bondage
another hundred years.
Citizens to a nation
they do not own.

Dead before freedom rings,
only for broken chains
rusted in blood to clamp
around the ankles of men
whose averted eyes
let someone else
cast his vote.

© 2016 Nortina Simmons

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Your vote does matter. You have the power to change this world. Don’t let the wrong people get elected in November.