Midnight in Mississippi
by M. Eliza Hamilton Abegunde (’01)

Emmett Till's ghost hangs between us
six black women remembering history out loud.
On this midnight passage in a white van
through land that was never white
only the trees hear our laughter lilting
through windows darkened by night.
The road reveals nothing except what we leave now
and what we now enter.

Emmett Till's ghost hangs between us,
his little boy body dredged bloated and beaten
Southern white punishment for a black boy too far from
home.
We speak gently of the dead knowing they listen
for their names to be called.
In a brief pause, we each hold our breaths
not daring to speak the Truth:
When they threw him in the water
his great grandmother was there waiting for his
return.

Which one of us would have dreamed our native land
would take us back like this,
dark and silent like our mothers' wombs.
Which one of us would have dreamed one day
we would be unafraid of the pecan trees
whose branches tonight hang only their own fruit.

Copyright © 1996 M. Eliza Hamilton Abegunde. All right reserved. Used with permission of the author.

M. Eliza Hamilton Abegunde focuses on the experiences of African descendants. As a Healing Facilitator, she uses the body as a memory site to reveal hidden stories, especially the lost voices of the Middle Passage. She is the author of Still Breathing and What Is Now Unanswerable. Her work appears in numerous anthologies, including I Feel A Little Jumpy Around You, Knowing Stones: Poems of Exotic Places, Beyond the Frontier, Catch the Fire, Jane's Stories II, We Hear Their Voices, and Writing Our Way Out of the Dark. She has been the recipient of grants, fellowships, and residencies including those from the Barbara Deming/Money for Women Fund, Ragdale, and Norcroft. She is one of the Founding Members of Jane's Stories Press and Foundation.

Copyright © 1997-2001 by Cave Canem Foundation, Inc.

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