Skin

I’m a nigger on the sidewalk, no more, no less, don’t you just fucking know. You pass me every day. Could be you don’t notice me, could be you look me up and down, you wonder where this nigger’s been, where he’s going. What he got his hands on. I don’t know, I don’t fucking care. When you’re just a nigger on the sidewalk seems to me the whole world shrinks around you, shrugs you off. You’re everything and you’re nothing and the only people want to know prefer you to be nothing.
Nothing after a while, everything for the minute, that’s the nigger’s lot
They got me on my way to my Grandma’s, over on Belle Vue Place.
‘Dick, motherfucker,’ the cop says as his colleagues hold my arms, half nelson, neck hold choker, kick in the calf, in the thigh, crowds are gathering and their cell phones flash as my eyes flash, there are stars and they grow brighter as batons rain down, they hit my collar bone, crack, they hit my back, over and over, ribs break I know it, ribs break and the breath goes out of me.
You think you know horror with your ghosts, with your hallowe'en and your campfire stories? Let me tell you, for a nigger like me there are far more real things going bump in the night.