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America Gives Its Blackness Back To Me

Shane McCrae

The shadow I had carried lightly has

Been forced upon me now and heavy since

Bulky since now and since unwieldy as

A corpse the shadow I was born from in

And to I should have known I couldn’t being

As how it wasn’t me who lifted it

Not all the way from me in the first place being

As how its lightness after was a gift

Its near- bodilessness a gift from those

Who bind it to me now I should have known

I couldn’t while they watched me set it loose

They bind it to my back they make it strange

That I knew in my arms they weigh it down

With the shadow they had kept the bindings in

Shane McCrae is the author of eight poetry collections, including Cain Named the Animal (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022).

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About this Poem

“‘America Gives Its Blackness Back to Me’ was written last November in the immediate wake of the election. It was spurred by a sudden reminder that as a black person in America I am neither free to determine who I am nor free even to know the precise terms according to which I am defined by others.”
—Shane McCrae

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More by this poet

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

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America Gives Its Blackness Back To Me

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