The summer of my seventeenth year they shot a boy
in the back in Cincinnati. A week later, they
shot another boy everywhere else. The Panthers
showed up. Carried the casket down the church
steps. My friend’s teammate’s mother told us,
If a cop tries to pull you over, just drive
all the way home, he ain’t bold enough
to shoot you in your front yard.
Henry Louis Gates. Ving Rhames.
I’m not famous enough to almost die at the door
I pay for, though I get mistaken for famous black
men all the time. I get mistaken for still here.
I get mistaken for intent. All endangered look alike.
We had a tree in our front yard. After the lightning,
we had half a tree. The backside of its bloom
sanded down by time. We thought we’d have to
uproot it. What is dead continues to die
until everything else is. It is still there
though, leaves falling from one side of its face.
I am thankful for that half of fall. It is still enough for us
to rake, and bury, and collect during the dry season.
I lied about the lightning, or
at least I don’t know
if that’s what fell the tree. I wasn’t there, but I left
out the part about everyone’s garbage cans scattered
far from their homes. I’m not a betting man—
the only thing I can ever put up is myself,
but I would wager the wind brought our tree low.
Invisible and sudden. Like the time a cop appeared
and asked me if I lived at the home I was punching
my garage code into. He could make me
famous with trespass.