Smile
When I see a black man smiling
like that, nodding and smiling
with both hands visible, mouthing
“Yes, Officer,” across the street,
I think of my father, who taught us
the words “cooperate,” “officer,”
to memorize badge numbers,
who has seen black men shot at
from behind in the warm months north.
And I think of the fine line—
hairline, eyelash, fingernail paring—
the whisper that separates
obsequious from safe. Armstrong,
Johnson, Robinson, Mays.
A woman with a yellow head
of cotton-candy hair stumbles out
of a bar at after lunch-time
clutching a black man’s arm as if
for her life. And the brother
smiles, and his eyes are flint
as he watches all sides of the street.
by Elizabeth Alexander
from What Saves Us— Poems of
. . .. . Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump
Edited by Martín Espada
Curbstone Books, 2019