YOU SHOULD KNOW
POEM by Opal Palmer Adisa

I – Money Mississippi

here fear has
many faces
none of them clean
it swells in the heat
festers then burst
like a boil
where separate
was never equal

II - August 28 1955

each day begins
like the others
with promise or desolation
you never really know
until time and history
call its significance

84 degree fahrenheit

nothing unusual
no premonition
that anyone recalls
no erratic wind
owl hooting
or dogs howling
just the same day
that now forever
will never be just
another day

III – The Murderers

he was stubborn
that one
full of himself
uppity northern nigger
even with the gun butt
connecting with his head
he refused to say sorry
wouldn’t stop staring at me
called me an ignorant cracker
i had to gouge out his eyes
we wouldn’t have beaten
him so much if he had just shut up
said my wife wasn’t nothing to talk about
his white girl friend in Chicago was prettier
that’s when i shot him
he asked for it
he deserved it
wanted to rip his body apart
that’s why we bound him in barbed wire
and tied the 75 lb cotton gin
to him before we dumped him
that will teach the uppity nigger
nothing worse than a northern nigger
like I said after they acquitted me
he got off easy if you ask me

IV - Tallahatchie River’s Moan

for three days
i cradled him
in my arms
cooed in his ears
rocked him in my waters
kiss the places
where his eyes
used to be
sang to him
hush baby hush
hush now baby boy hush
i seeped into his body
trying to unloose welts
in which they beat their pain
i told him he did nothing
to invite their venom
for three days
he was mine
i wanted to keep him
like i had sheltered
so many others before him
my water dissolves their cruelty

V – The Mortician

lord knows
been in this business long enough
to observe death
in all its lewd ugliness
but when they brought me
that boy’s body -- emmett
i had to swallow hard and long
to keep from vomit all over myself
now most folks don’t go to death
like melting into a comforting bosom
no matter their age or faith in the lord
there is almost always surprises in the end
a question alarm only a few surrender sweetly
but this death was none of those
was something else all together
defiance furry outrage accusation
i knew no amount of reconstruction
could hide the malevolence
still i did the best i could
worked long and hard

to show how sorry i was
for what happened

for all of what has happened
in this damned country

VI - Burr Oak Cemetery - Alsip Illinois

i’ve got him now
skull and bones
harm is in the need to understand
otherwise he be safe
resting in the uncomfortable memory
of those who refuse to forget

* This poem is a narrative about, Emmett Till, the fourteen-year-old African American boy who was brutally murdered by White racists for allegedly whistling at a white woman in the segregated, August 28, 1955.

YouTube MySpace Facebook Twitter