No, I still have not watched The Hate U Give; nor have I read the book. / Though, I did, for one moment, consider playing the movie

Poetry by Yavaria Ryan

No, I still have not watched The Hate U Give; nor have I read the book.
Though, I did, for one moment, consider playing the movie in the background of my day, but I feared the likelihood of the police slipping into my thoughts with their guns pointed towards me as I brushed my hair.
 
I don’t want to hear about it anymore. All the people dying innocently and alone. Let’s talk about candy instead. How it’s so sweet it rots your teeth, and your whole mouth decays.
 
Your breath smells like a corpse
left on the sidewalk on the hottest day of summer.               
 
Your breath smells like a young man
left on the sidewalk on the hottest day of summer.
 
Your breath smells like a young black man
left on the sidewalk on the hottest day of summer.               
 
Candy in the wrong hands can become quite dangerous. Grab a chocolate
and launch at your neighbor. He catches it with his mouth
and chokes.
 
Does murder taste better when committed by candy? Does death read
better on pages labeled fiction? Does death look better in line
breaks? Maybe death ingests better in rhyme:
 
Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
I shot you nine times
because I thought you said, Boo.

Yavaria Ryan holds a M.F.A in Creative Writing from Fairfield University and a B.A. in Writing and Linguistics from Georgia Southern University. Her poems have appeared in The Write Launch and Cathexis Northwest Press.