The Perfect Victim

He wouldn’t have stolen cigarillos when he was 16.
He wouldn’t have posed on Instagram with his hands held like that.
He won’t jog in the nice neighborhood
or be in the stairwell when the power’s out
or knock on doors after a car accident.
He’ll give them his ID even if in front of his own home.
He won’t get scared and run out the passenger side.
He’ll hold his hands still on the steering wheel.
He’ll comply with orders but not too quickly
or slowly.
He won’t have a torn piece of a plastic bag in his pocket.
He won’t wear a hoodie or sag his jeans.
No tattoos either.
He won’t smoke or drink or talk on a cellphone
or record on a cellphone or ask why he’s being stopped
or be too quiet like he’s hiding something.
He won’t be a big kid.
He’ll have a normal name
but not a common one that pulls up a warrant.
He won’t complain that the cops are hurting him
when they pull his wrists behind his back.
He won’t cuss. Ever.
He’ll have to do more than go to church,
than be an honor student, a star player,
a gospel singer, a father, a Harvard professor,
a legislator, an Army medic in uniform.
He’ll have to be more than an angel.
He’ll have to be your son.

Michael J. Grabell grew up in a single-parent household, the son of a high school Spanish teacher and the grandson of an immigrant window washer from Ukraine.  His poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, Best New Poets, North American Review, Southwest Review, and the Best American Poetry anthology among others.  He was a finalist for the 2024 RHINO Founders’ Prize, and his first chapbook, Macho Man, won the Finishing Line Press competition. Outside of poetry, he works as an investigative reporter and editor for ProPublica, where he writes about economic issues, labor, and immigration.  He is a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize — in 2021, as part of a team covering Covid-19, and in 2019, for stories that helped expose the impact of family separation at the border and abuse in immigrant children’s shelters.