*This material may not be appropriate for all audiences. We do not publish on the purpose of shock-value, neither do we want to sugar-coat the harsh realities of our modern age at all. Rather, we desire to present truth, God’s ultimate truth, and that includes both pure beauty and uncomfortable sin. Together, let’s confront that which we fail to see, hear, feel, and comprehend in the way our Father always intended us to.

Humbly, Santo Collective

Writing has always been a form of processing for me. It’s both prayer and meditation. The death of George Floyd and the surge of pain resonating from the streets, my Chicago streets, confronted every hall of power: prisons, government buildings, schools, and churches. As a Christian and a “radical” (some would argue those identities are one and the same) I spent a lot of time asking how Christ would respond to our world today— what does the Love of God look like in the midst of systemic oppression? 

29 years, as a black woman, awash in the grace of God has taught me that Love looks much more like marching and mutual aid than monuments and monoliths of wealth.

They hung God from a tree, watched His feet jerk ‘til his body stilled.

They beat God to death, excavated genitals on Her already othered body.

They choked God out, let the refrain ring: “A breath I have no more, my mother, bring her close”. 

They shot God 16 times, body limp in the street, soaked in a pool of His own blood. 

They found God’s body mangled in a dumpster, naked and desecrated. 

They put God in a cage and shouted, “take off your crown, you are no king”. 

They hung God from a cross and rejoiced in the execution.

Are you weeping at the sight? 

Faltering pathetically, 

consulting the rope about its intent.

Are you scrolling past bloodied streets, 

weak eyed and feebly willed, 

unwilling to engage the same river running through your own veins?

Are you placating discomfort? 

Holding one life in both hands using preoccupation as an excuse? 

“There’s no room here” 

checking bodies, not souls, for human verification. 

Are you sanitizing? 

Mending nails rammed through flesh, incrementally tearing under the weight of an entire human body. 

A clean God never was and never will be,

God is 6 feet deep in the sins of you and I,

Hanging in anguish from trees near and far,

Bleeding out on a bed of tar, stiff bodied and forgotten. 

Genitals dissected before an audience,

anxiously awaiting the evaluation of God’s value. 

God is victim to your hate speech, your economic robbery, 

your disdain for black skin, 

you’re insistence on scarcity, 

you’re genocide, 

you’re slave ships, 

you’re legislation, 

your compliance. 

My silence. 

Let these screams...

Allow these yells...

Partake in this robbery reclaimed and enter into rebirth. 

Like holy water awash on a sinner’s brow rejoice in the gift of absolution as any and all perceived reality crumbles

around you and new life is sprung forth from the mouth of teary eyed, 

gas fumed, 

incarceration abolishing, 

Black babe. 

Demitria currently resides in Chicago, Illinois.