Since it didn’t happen the evening
Of whatever the hell Emmett Till did;
Whistle, or wave, or simply galled
His throat to shoot the breeze
Into the face of white, southern
Womanhood,
I’d like to imagine he walked out
Of that store, into the hot Mississippi
Air, with the lope of a bank robber,
Swinging his bag of loot.
The dare won, his point made;
I’m not from here, and where I’m from,
This shit is crazy.
And nothing happened, the first two nights,
And no one came the third.
That’s how long he had
To be a new kind of Negro.