Brother is we is each of us we ghosts
Brother of white folks we
don't never known us brother we
Because we never doesn't fits
...
Nicholas turned eleven two
Months he ago a he ago
I after him a-running still
...
Today you will the say the any ever
best thing any ever anyone
Said about Paul Celan
...
A white man wouldn't less
He stripped me naked was
Whipping me know
...
Before it disappears
on the sand his long white beard before it disappears
The face of the man
in the waves I ask her does she see it ask her does
...
Shane McCrae (born September 22, 1975) is an American poet. He is the author of the poetry collections The Animal Too Big to Kill (winner of the 2014 Lexi Rudnitsky/Editor's Choice Award; to be published in September, 2015 by Persea Books), Forgiveness Forgiveness (Factory Hollow Press, 2014), Blood (Noemi Press, 2013), and Mule (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2011). McCrae was the recipient of a 2011 Whiting Writers' Award, and in 2012 his collection Mule was a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and a PEN Center USA Literary Award. In 2013, McCrae received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. His poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Best American Poetry 2010, American Poetry Review, African American Review, Fence, and AGNI. Shane McCrae attended the University of Oregon, Linfield College, the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and Harvard Law School. He lives in Oberlin, Ohio, where he is an Assistant Professor in the Creative Writing program at Oberlin College. McCrae also teaches in the brief-residency MFA program at Spalding University.)
Whose Story of Us We Is Told Is Us
Brother is we is each of us we ghosts
Brother of white folks we
don't never known us brother we
Because we never doesn't fits
Nowhere we brother
doesn't fits in bodies
Our bodies we is always walking leaking
like a ghost can't be a body in one place
But every eyes / Catches and pulls at it
Like every eyes in any
white folks is another
Hole in our bodies
Brother / Is we is never known them close
Up close whose ghosts we brother leaking is
Whose story of us we is told is us is water in a fist
Brother we not the fist
we not the water
we the thirst
This guy is the best poet writing in English today (to my ears and eyes) . But I guess he'll never get the White Guys' Nobel Prize.