Photo courtesy of @munshots
For George Floyd, Age 46
| Don’t loot. Don’t shoot. Don’t sit. Don’t stand. Don’t look. Don’t touch. Don’t speak. Don’t ride. Don’t march. Don’t shout. Don’t kneel. Don’t vote. Don’t learn. Don’t marry. Don’t read. Don’t join. Don’t run. Don’t resist. Don’t assemble. Don’t resemble. Don’t eat. Don’t shop. Don’t steal. |
Don’t jog. Don’t walk. Don’t work. Don’t shirk. Don’t pray. Don’t play. Don’t gather. Don’t sing. Don’t father. Don’t mother. Don’t loiter. Don’t teach. Don’t drive. Don’t curse. Don’t argue. Don’t cry. Don’t earn. Don’t heal. Don’t mourn. Don’t damage. Don’t question. Don’t hope. Don’t breathe. |
Tom Lakin is a writer from Boston. His short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Narrative (as a Story of the Week), Pleiades, Ruminate, Pembroke Magazine, Lunch Ticket, and The Adroit Journal, among others. He is the recipient of a 2018 G.B. Crump Prize in Experimental Fiction and has been a finalist or semi-finalist in several other contests, including The Saturday Evening Post Great American Fiction Contest and the American Short(er) Fiction Prize. Tom attended Bowdoin College and received his MFA from Emerson College, where he was a full-tuition fellow.
JMWW 