I Count These Days in Toes

Or, Cavities

Ryan J. Petteway
Resistance Poetry
1 min readDec 9, 2020

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photo courtesy of author

they say covid has
killed one in one
thousand
Black
Americans*

that we must practice
social distancing
and wear masks
thick enough to keep us from
seeing
the difference between
where we should stand and
where George is
lying

because covid has
killed one in one
thousand

funny

one

in one thousand
Black men bodied
by one-time

that’s now 6 feet
by 6 feet
that’s four
feet and twenty toes
presumably

two hundred
ninety thousand
four hundred
bodies planted over
two thousand twenty
opportunities to
Till differently

that’s
how many
six-feets
are in
forty acres
if you keep
their legs straight
and flex
their toes

how many Breonnas
in two thousand
twenty-one if
Daniel Cameron
still wishes he were
white like Mitch’s
pillow case or the
wrapper on Casey’s
one-foot
sandwich

that’s a six-foot cavity, right?

somebody please
tell the health department
you can’t measure
social distance
in feet

that’s it.
that’s the tweet.

*it is now 1 in 875.

#CaseyGoodson
#BlackLivesMatter

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Ryan J. Petteway
Resistance Poetry

public health professor, social epidemiologist, writer of things sippin’ dark roast in the PDX trying to keep the Griffey Max 1 Freshwaters dry