by Reid Mitchell

Yancheng, 4 June 2019

Today I go out, dressed all in white
and wonder if anybody gets the message

a laowai in white, an uninvited mourner
in what my students are told is a mere

family matter. The massacre of innocents
is a matter for the world and perhaps so is

the cause of freedom and dignity. So
like last year and the year before

today I will go out, dressed all in white

Reid Mitchell is a New Orleanian teaching in China. In 2019, PalmArtPress published his collection of poems, Sell Your Bones. He is Cha‘s Consulting Editor.