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.
