“That part is not true. Nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him.” – Carolyn Bryant Donham in 2008
May we remember
the men who came for you
passed down their rabid hunger
in a ceremony that began
with the question, “If we’re no better than a black boy
from up river, who are we better than?” No answer
so they made their hollowness a war cry.
Even though your grandmother
had named a son Moses
they parted her doorway like they didn’t
know who really drowned in the Red Sea.
All they remembered was a river of blood
so they pulled you from your bed unfinished.
Their souls shattered
when they left you in the muddy waters
your grandmother saw in vision.
They heavied your body with a cotton gin fan
to remind Mississippi
that cotton – not this wilted Christchild – was king.
In that dusky river they didn’t see the ancestors
on errand to collect the pieces of your skull like seaglass.
May we remember that your eyes
rested,
beloved,
while the white woman held
a sleepless secret –
decades of dark circles –
“That part wasn’t true.”
And in the end, when God
gives the mob what they always
wanted most – order –
may it be your sacred stutter
chosen to tell them
the first shall be last and the last shall be first
as you go before.
Hilary Brown is a public school teacher in a border town.