Not an Elegy for Mike Brown

The title defines the poem against the thing that it is not: an elegy. Elegies are poems of serious reflection, typically written as laments for the dead (Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary). However, the negative word “not” suggests that mourning Mike Brown, a man whose name is only known in relation to his violent death, is not the poem’s main concern. Rather, this negation suggests a scope beyond the individual; the poem’s action extrapolates out from this singular death to explore the collective, historical trauma of Black death, emphasizing its routine horror within modern society.

The first line exposes the strengths and limitations of poetry as a political response; the tone is laced with exhaustion and disgust, admitting that “I am sick of writing this poem” (Line 1). The idiom of being “sick of writing” implies the speaker’s repeated encounters with death, suggesting that they have written countless, similar poems, none of which have stopped the continued murder of Black boys (Line 1). However, despite the perceptible futility of this pursuit, the speaker still says: “but bring the boy. his new name / his same old body” (Lines 2-3), accepting that the only action left is to bear witness yet again and “mourn / until we forget what we are mourning” (Lines 4-5).