By Michael Tyler, EJS Poet-in-Residence
I awakened on Tuesday to the disturbing news of yet two more lynchings. For months now, these stories, woefully unreported and shamefully dismissed, have plagued my conscience. While growing up, I was told by relatives, who lived through America’s lynching spree during the early to mid-20th century, about eyewitness accounts of bodies hanging from trees, barns, phone poles, and even church steeples. I learned about two relatives who met that end. So, these deaths impact me at a very visceral level. I’ve finally been able to steady my mind enough to write a piece about it. I’ve constructed a poem, woven and threaded by a series of ellipses, to suggest the weaving and threading that makes rope. In fact, the entire poem details the creation of rope from plant to end product. I use language to relate that creation to slavery and the coercive brutality of racism. It is not an easy read. It shouldn’t be.
And…
By Michael Tyler
The plant is snatched from its native land…stolen from the soil that birthed it…grouped, bound, and hauled into the water…retted and slowly drowned for the rot that kills what keeps it whole…then laid across the ground and brutally beaten to break its core…next comes the scutching to violently scrape away its native sheath…fibers from the shoots are all that remain…heckled into slivers before being tortured and twisted and loomed and locked into place…callously coiled and permanently prepared to serve many burdens…stripped of its name at birth it will hence be forever known as rope…then it will be taught to be taut and to tie caste-looping knots…until the day comes when the rope learns the fatal lesson to knot its twine into a noose…and the rope then reasons how to tether fruit to a tree that didn’t grow it…and the rope will tie more fruit to more trees…until the bark of many trunks drips red to quench the roots of many bigotries…and the taste of the fruit’s black flesh will feed the white craving for its bitter sweetness…and the rope will mature to become a reaper to harvest cultivated lives…and again the rope will hang another ripened fruit…and again the rope will hang another life…and again the rope will hang another father…and again the rope will hang another faith…and again the rope will hang another mother…and again the rope will hang another moral…and again the rope will hang another brother…and again the rope will hang another benevolence…and again the rope will hang another sister…and again the rope will hang another sanctity…and again the rope will hang another neck…and again the rope will hang another nation…and again the rope will hang another…and again the rope will hang…and again the rope will…and again the rope…and again the…and again…and…
…Mingo Demond Allen II (31)…Kyle Bassinga (21…James Cooper (29)…Randy Dudley (34)…Demetrius Eugene Fleming (38)…Tasia Fortune (29)…Robert Fuller (24)…Malcom Harsch (38)…Trevonte Jamal Shubert-Helton (29)…Syriah Henderson (29)…Gerard “Jay” Jackson (28)…Justice Kai James (21)…Dayne Jones (24)…Donté Perez Jones (35)…Mario Kaiser (30)…Amanuel “Amani” Kildea (20)…Javion Magee (21)…Terrence “Tory” Medley (39)…Mikayla Miller (16)…To’Nea Nicole Miller (27)…Juliana Umba Nzita (16)…Dematravion “Trey” Reed (25)…Dennoriss Richardson (39)…Arthur Robbins IV (32)…Earl Smith (58)…Stephen Styles (43)…Cedric Tayhue (36)…Unidentified man (20)…Unidentified man (17)…Unidentified man (36)…Unidentified man (40)…Unidentified man (32)…Larry Williams (34)…William “Boo” Young (40)…