In Which Carmen Writes Graphic Poetry

I was wandering through Separate is not Equal: Brown v. Board of Education when I chanced across a photograph of a crowd before a gallows. Atop the gallows was a fuzzy and indistinct group of figures, but even with the distance and poor-quality early photo it was easy to tell that only one was black. The caption below said that the black man--boy, really--had been a learning-disabled citizen accused of raping a white woman. He was soaked in oil, set on fire, tortured, and hanged. The photo made me almost physically sick, but what was worse was the complete lack of emotion in the caption. I know it's a museum and therefore should not pass judgment even on something so obviously wrong, but the fact that emotions did not enter at all into the summary of the lynching shook me. Of course, since it affected me, it gets its own poem.

Warning for explicit violence.

( To A Young Man Publicly Lynched )