3 poems by Stacey Curran | in The Blue Nib

Originally published at https://thebluenib.com on June 23, 2020.

Emmett Till: Still

They had to rebuild it,

Your sign: bulletproof now,

Immortal you’ve become.

They keep trying to kill you,

Even with your body decades dead.

Your name, your image, still in the news.

They fear how you’ve grown.

Not physically,

No, they stopped that.

But in the minds of all who know,

All who hear,

Of what they did to you,

To punish what you never did.

Your bruised, battered face,

Proving their brutality.

Their crime is more than you lost,

Or justice never found.

It is that they are still beating,

Still shooting.

And their human targets,

Who look like you,

Are still not bulletproof.

Miss Me

“You’ll miss me when I’m dead,”

This was her favorite line.

Invoking guilt in her children,

One of her favorite things.