this apocalypse

so many road trips. anytime there was a break from school. up and down the western US. windows down and no cars ahead. the road is how commercials showed us freedom. i felt it like it was real, middle-class myth made well. is this how patriots are indoctrinated?

the automobile and the highways--giving rise to picket fences and uniform lawns--carved white supremacy into the land, entrenching stolen wealth, kettling color and poverty. amerika showed a false face to the third world, a pretty picture of peace and plenty, not the neighborhood that got raised to build the highway. we must accept my immigrant parents’ american dream is a lie so that King's might have a shot.


this city’s legacy, racist grand-architect, building highways in the name of white supremacy, obsessed with keeping Black and Brown folks away from the water. how did the street, the road, tool of spatial control, come to symbolize freedom? a slick of asphalt shrouds an aggregate of bone.


He died in the street.


whose streets? can all of these feet on the ground quake the earth and tear this veil?

from Yujin Park