America Gives Its Blackness Back To Me
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
Copyright © 2017 by Shane McCrae. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 29, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets.
“‘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
Shane McCrae
Shane McCrae is the author of eight poetry collections, including Cain Named the Animal (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022).