Banjo Yes Plucks an Apple from a Tree in a Park
-For Tamir Rice
I hold an apple in my hand on set
It is or ain’t an apple ain’t a real
Apple depending on am I in the shot
Or am I watching with the crew a real
Apple don’t taste no sweeter than a movie
Apple it ain’t crisper but it’s some better
A nigger eats an apple in a movie
It ain’t no apple it’s a big fat water-
melon man it’s fried chicken it’s all that
Bullshit a nigger eats but he ain’t eating
No nigger in no movie ever got
Hungry and ate and it was just him eating
No nigger tells the story of himself
Man even if I hate a nigger what
He loves is what I love I ask myself
Before I do anything it don’t mat-
ter what it is Who’s watching me and What
They gonna think they see I waste my mind
Trying to read white folks’ minds I’ll tell you what
An apple is it’s death it’s my child dead
–Shane McCrae
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Shane McCrae has published four books of poems—most recently, The Animal Too Big to Kill (Persea Books, 2015). He teaches at Oberlin College and Spalding University, and has received a Whiting Writer’s Award and a fellowship from the NEA. He lives in Oberlin, Ohio.
