by: Harrison Smith
“Them damn niggers,” he said. “I swear to godfrey, it’s a wonder we have as little trouble
with them as we do. Because why? Because they ain’t human.”
-William Faulkner, “Pantaloon in Black.”
Count the contusions on my blue-black back
That cake’n’clump the now white lasting lashes.
“Your snow streaked stripes, new signs of purity,” they say;
In truth my mass-marred etchings of each prison day.
My father torn away like a fresh scab
And tossed inside a splintered, seasick cell.
My mother their moan’n machine, her womb a cog,
To push the product out with flesh for steel.
A laughing mule? A somber hog?
I eat with fork and spoon, and drink from cups!
Where is the soiled hay– the bed for beasts!
Where is the fly-filled, tarnished trough– the fount for swine!
My skin my shackles and my chain-made yoke,
I wear my colour like a healthy leper.
We gnash at the flogging fever of the serrated sun,
And dreaming dance, soothed by the balmy moon.
We curse the cock, that plume punctured warden,
Who calls us crassly to our agony;
Then from our barless prisons coldly rise
To burn our backs beneath deaf-skies.
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