My Jandek Plague Journal: 6/24/20 "The Doves"

"There were some things/I didn't want to see/Anyway/I'd rather say nothing/And look at the moon/Glow behind dark clouds." I did a purge awhile back of my Twitter feed. Every time I'd see the face of a Black man show up, I'd panic and worry that this was another person murdered by police. They weren't always, but that specter was always there, that threat. Celebratory graduation photos are also the go-to choice for memorials, and I couldn't take the way America had perverted these pictures, made them adjunct to the snuff film pornography of police murder. But we have to see the videos otherwise we wouldn't believe/But we have to see the videos or the full weight of the threat of what can be done won't be felt. Now my feed is filled with atrocity upon atrocity and claims that the media is starting to look away. Have we not seen enough to believe? How were these people's stories ever in doubt? -6/24/20. "The Doves" from Austin Tuesday (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)