Remorse
For Nkululeko
Shame, I could never
dementia like him,
forgetting,
& now that he's gone
I keep thinking
of the one time
my father pushed me
into my mother's fish tank
murdering them all in process
because I didn't care about
my orchestra class & would
have rather been at track
practice learning things
that would help me escape
these daily deaths.
Deonte Osayande is a writer from Detroit, MI. He has represented Detroit at four National Poetry Slam competitions. He's a professor of English at Wayne County Community College. His books include Class (Urban Farmhouse Press, 2017), Circus (Brick Mantle Books, 2018) and Civilian (Urban Farmhouse Press, 2019). He also managed the Rustbelt Midwest Regional Poetry Slam and Festival for 2014 and 2018.
You can see more of his work in 9.1 and 3.1 and 3.1 and 3.4 and 3.4 and 4.4 and 6.1 and 7.3 and 8.2 and 8.2 and the 2019 Pocket Poems Anthology