A Strange and Bitter Crop

Strange Fruit is a crop Never ripe That although not picked first Must not be forgotten. For even an apple which is rotten Is arranged in the fruit bowl To be looked at with disgust Until one goes through the fuss of picking it up, casting it a discontented look, and then pitching it; a useless and despicable thing. As the flies Teem on the bruised, brown apple, The cook snatches up the fruit: Perfect for applesauce. Or better still, perhaps it should not have been picked from the apple tree at all, left to Drop on the head of another Newton some other day. I speak of apples which are rotten, But the apples of which I speak Are not apples, and instead are Memories of Black bodies swinging in the Southern Breeze. Like the rotten fruit, forgotten with ease, this Odious image too often escapes memories. And yet, who wants to remember This image which percolates the porous Convolutions of the mind’s eye until that image that’s imprinted makes you Shameful and damned sick. The crows and scavengers crowd on the suspended corpse Gouging the bulging eyes and clawing, Clawing at the parched and decrepit skin, which is Stripped away from the body Revealing the lifeless heart which it covered. And into the distance The Lynchers retreat, running away from the rising sun, smiling at their families, while Dousing the fire of their torches, For when the fire is alight there is nowhere to hide their faces. While the apple hangs broken and bruised, beaten to rottenness. That was then. This is now. Now, the Lynchers lynch without lynching. Instead of tying an open knot in a rope They deafen their ears to the voice of the lynched. And now the lynched needn’t be black, They can be Hispanic, Muslim, Gay, or other oppressed minority But still, they are all black in the eyes of the Lyncher. Black, like the shadow of the Tenacious view eclipsing them, cast by The Lyncher. Black, like the opaque darkness Shrouding the humanity of The Lyncher. Black, like indistinct spaces between stars In the night sky. Ms. Holiday sang her verse of the strange and perverse A while ago when the dead hung from a poplar limb And their ghost was a hooded figure bedecked in an “intemerate” white. Today, the Lyncher’s rope taunts in the doorway of the workplace, schools, airports, Fishing out the color. Those who fish with the rope and twist the rope Are those who surround themselves with only their color, only their own mindset, and only the Unyielding perception of people as goods, not beings. Still ostracized are those who deviate from the standard, but waning majority of Superior color, Superior attitude, Superior belief. Only when reflected upon does the strange and deranged killing Seem like the Foul Rotten, and Raw crop that it is. Apples are apples; Sorted and Weeded through by the farmer. If there’s a problem with the fruit, Blame the farmer.