How these young white boyskeep smiling at me, but notsaying anything, as if a Byrdis curled beneath their tongue.*I caught my twelve-year-oldstaring out our front windowat the neighbors. What’s on yourmind, I asked him. Betrayal.*The word Jasper means “speckled”or “spotted rock.” A rainbow,a heliotrope, the stone of Babylon,which traces back to Africa.*The deceased’s family doesn’tbelieve in the death penalty.Friends said death isn’t enough,eye for an eye, feet, legs, hands.*To humanize him, the defenseargues Mr. King was gang-rapedrepeatedly by Black men in prisonwhen he was only fifteen.*The evidence: a button, a longbloody chain, his cap. Of course,a man in pieces, a lighter, one sideengraved “KKK,” the other, “Possum.”*Because of vandals, they had to builda fence around the gravesite, padlockthe front doors of the church.All these new ways people get hurt.*Those poems by white womenin the 1980s about violence, cruelty.I don’t get catcalled, but men leanout windows, trying to guess my name.*I keep telling myself: They’re gonnaget you because you are alone, Amaud:Gonna get you because you’re too old,because you’re too far from home.*But how can we defend ourselvesfrom our children and grandchildren?How old was Dylann Roof, or the boyin Louisiana, all those church burnings?*Maybe my grandparents were runout of Texas, but they stayed country.And they ended up raising their familyin the murder capital of the world.
Possum Dead
for James Byrd
Feature Date
- August 17, 2020
Series
- What Sparks Poetry
Selected By
Share This Poem
Print This Poem
Copyright © 2020 by Amaud Jamaul Johnson
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Amaud Jamaul Johnson is author of three poetry collections, Imperial Liquor, Darktown Follies, and Red Summer. His honors include a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, a MacDowell Fellowship, the Dorset Prize, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, the Edna Muendt Poetry Award, and a Pushcart Prize. His poetry has appeared in American Poetry Review, Callaloo, Kenyon Review, Best American Poetry, The Southern Review, Narrative Magazine, Harvard Review, Crazyhorse, and elsewhere. He directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and is a member of the graduate poetry faculty at Warren Wilson College.
Spring 2020
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Louisiana State University
Co-Editor & Poetry Editor
Jessica Faust
The Southern Review is one of the nation’s premiere literary journals. Hailed by Time as “superior to any other journal in the English language,” we have made literary history since our founding in 1935. We publish a diverse array of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry by the country’s—and the world’s—most respected contemporary writers.
“The Southern Review … represents everything that is good in the world of literary publication. Their dedication to aesthetic quality has been the gold standard in literary publication for over seventy-five years.”
—James Lee Burke
“A leading literary quarterly.”
—The New York Times
Poetry Daily Depends on You
With your support, we make reading the best contemporary poetry a treasured daily experience. Consider a contribution today.
