Poetry by Shane McCrae

Image by Santiago Sepúlveda / santiagosepulveda.weebly.com

Banjo Yes Recalls His First Movies

 

Most of the time I spent

In the beginning most of the time between

 

Takes I spent chasing after

their filth in my mind

 

They had me playing

Servants and when the cameras stopped I kept on cleaning

 

In those days I had been

Running from one     / End of the lot to the other for

 

Years and they what it was was what the white folks did was you was like

A mind in something in a body but     that body wasn’t yours

 

I’ll tell you what it was like what it was like was that body was

A second mind / Talking

 

your body was a voice like you was talking to yourself

Telling you do what you supposed to do white

 

folks the way they talk about

Their cars     their houses     niggers they talk like

 

Owning a thing a man is something they / Do with their hands

and niggers     / We got to be / Free if we ain’t in chains

 

Well back when I was starting out the only talking I could do on screen was talking

chains around myself

 

And who was it who

Paid me to talk

 

White folks     give you a choice

and they / Act like they’re giving you a gift

 

You can be free

Or you can live
 



Shane McCrae has written four full-length books of poems—Mule (Cleveland State University Poetry Center; finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and a PEN Center USA Literary Award), Blood (Noemi Press), Forgiveness Forgiveness (Factory Hollow Press), and The Animal Too Big to Kill (Persea Books; winner of the 2014 Lexi Rudnitsky/Editor’s Choice Award)—and three chapbooks. He holds an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a JD from Harvard Law School.