Writer Highlight Featuring: Charlene Elson-Gustard

“Had I Known Assembly Was Required”

I’d have turned the rambling radio off
and left my tiny dingy apartment
in the failed project that day.
I’d have trekked through tear-filled streets with no officers on the beat–
Walked, because I had no fare to pay.
I would not have been so concerned
about getting tired, had I known assembly was required to legitimize a movement. To address mental enslavement. To voice decades of thunderous silence and to make a king a monument. I’d have gone. Had I known the power of a dream.