God Willing

God Willing
By Derwin Sisnett


Far Rockaway will let both of us live,
spare our mother from finding our bodies
mangled and bare in abandoned lots, weeds
bowed to wan skin. God willing, we’ll survive
longer than Ernest, Dewayne, Da’Shawn did,
our ears will stop ringing from block parties’
woofers and gun shots—and I pray we
will make it home tonight, alive.

How our names lived past stick and wet cement,
longer than spray-paint and bodega gate,
marker and park bench, I don’t know. But we’ve
grown so much taller since the night we spent
one winter, hunched over the snow, scraping
ourselves into existence, memory.

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Derwin Sisnett
Poet & Founder of Maslow Development Inc.

Photography by Ali Harfouche