Caitie L. Young | SOME CALIFORNIA POLICE ARE BIASED. A REPORT SAYS THEY HAVE NO CLEAR PLANS TO FIX THAT

(Headline from NPR, May 2022)

no love in America
no love in America
it’s a cold dark place
for something so warm like me
– Anonymous student at the Akron Juvenile Detention Center

in my old town the white boys from College Street
hide guns, weed, & bicycle parts in a wooded area
off Conotton Creek Trail. C said even the cops
smoke back there, shoot up, & leave the needles
stuck in the trees.

the boys at the juvenile detention center are rowdy but sweet
one wrote me a poem in Spanish, another tells me
he didn’t do it, never defined it, only said sometimes
he turns his tears to curtains and opens a window,
considers stepping out, & like dust in air he wants only to be
seen in rays of light, he says he hopes he will make it home
before Christmas, but in April he’s still there, you can’t see it
in his face, but his body is filled with his tears; he reads
every poem, he takes the pencil and paper but his hands,
oh his hands, never move.


Caitie L. Young (they/them) is a poet and fiction writer in Kent, Ohio. Their work has appeared in or is forthcoming in The Minnesota Review, Scapegoat, Passengers Journal, The Elevation Review, and elsewhere. Caitie is studying creative writing in the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts Program (NEOMFA) and is a graduate teaching artist with the Wick Poetry Center. Their work is focused on the effects of generational trauma, politics, and transgender identity. Cait maintains a deep affection for tomatoes, drinking too much coffee, and is a strong advocate for queer and trans youth.