Whose Story of Us We Is Told Is Us

Shane McCrae

Brother is we is each of us we ghosts

Brother of white folks we

don’t never known us brother we

Because we never doesn’t fits

Nowhere we brother

doesn’t fits in bodies



Our bodies we is always walking leaking

like a ghost can’t be a body in one place

But every eyes     / Catches and pulls at it

Like every eyes in any

white folks is another

Hole in our bodies



Brother     / Is we is never known them close

Up close     whose ghosts we brother leaking is

Whose story of us we is told is us     is water in a fist

Brother we not the fist

we not the water

we the thirst

In the Event Of

Officer how you know I’m dancing is the body

-cam. Look, I’m riding centuries of whips, the first half

Of the ghost, arms out the window up, the second half

Arms flat on the pavement, palms down, now the ghost is whole

My arms stretched forward, like I’m bowing, but if I

Were standing, stretched above my head. Officer how

Shane McCrae

2021

What Sadness Anywhere Is Sadness

^{—for Melissa}

What sadness anywhere is sadness where
I could just stand and walk to you from sadness
Go home to you though I bring home my sadness
What sadness there though I have felt sad there

Before when I come home from far away
What sadness then or from three blocks uptown
My office where I write this poem down
In a room full of the dimness that fills spac-

Shane McCrae

2020

From the Ground It Must Have Looked Like Its Wings Were Not a Part of It

I rode to Heaven on a bird that did-

n’t look like any bird I ever saw

Before I saw it the bird’s wings were wide

And long and brightly colored and had no

Feathers but panels like glass held together

By black bones criss- crossing them from the ground

Shane McCrae

2019

Poems

Whose Story of Us We Is Told Is Us

More by this poet

In the Event Of

What Sadness Anywhere Is Sadness

From the Ground It Must Have Looked Like Its Wings Were Not a Part of It

Poems

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Whose Story of Us We Is Told Is Us

More by this poet

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