The following version of this poem was used to create this guide: Brooks, Gwendolyn. "Riot." Poetry Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51835/riot.

Note that all parenthetical citations within the guide refer to the lines of the poem from which the quotations are taken.

“Riot” is a three-part poem by Chicago-born poet Gwendolyn Brooks. A major poem of the Black Arts Movement, the first part begins with an epigraph from Martin Luther King, Jr. which reads “a riot is the language of the unheard.” The poem proper begins with the story of a fictional “John Cabot” with “whitebluerose below his golden hair” (1). The speaker then enumerates the expensive possessions Cabot almost leaves behind because there is a riot approaching his home: his “Jaguar” (4), “Grandtully” (5), the “sculpture at the Richard Gray and Distelheim” (7-8).

The speaker then describes how “the Negroes” (10) and “the poor” (11) were “coming down the street” (10). John Cabot is disgusted by the group that is approaching him. He screams, “‘Don’t let it touch me! The blackness! Lord!’” (18). Despite his pleas, Cabot is overwhelmed by smells of “pig foot, chitterling, and cheap chili” (23). Cabot is engulfed in “fire” (28), “broken glass and blood” (29), crying out for god to forgive the rioters.