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![163
[*”Bill Collector in Harlem”: “Hi, there!: was a phrase actually seen on a low-income project hallway door in Brooklyn by the author, though the scene is here transferred to Harlem, which is in upper New York City.*]
Bill Collector in Harlem
“Hi, there!”
Some Harlem child
Had chalked on the hallway door.
Not a Georgia scrawl,
Not a “Hi, y’all”
In dirt on a sharecropper’s wall.
But tenement white,
Pert and bright,
Erect, and spelled just right
For the cockroach fat,
The shoebrush rat,
And the Upper New York cat.
Through a heavy hallway door
Some Harlem child said
“Hi, there!”
(cs. 1961)
1962](https://nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/manifold-cuny-api-store/store/resource/0/0/1/0017d2cc-17c2-4471-83b2-8951f78217e9/attachment/6f398ca2eb73bb8b60157979e893b7be.jpg)
![168
When this white though healing hand
Trespasses and takes command.)
(Hate for friends and hate for foes
Who have not endured hate’s blows
Digested with the crumbs of years.
What can stop these ancient tears
Burning in a little face
So captive in a starched embrace?)
(cs. 1963)
1964
168
Black Humor in France: For Etha
[*Written in Seyssins about a real incident, circumstances that show how humor can help heal the psyche. See my autobiographical essay “A Force in the Field, CAAS, Vol. 18, on this poem.*]
Outshouting bathwater,
whitefaced with soap,
behind me doorbursting,
“BOO!” right at my ear you jumped,
hopping to crouch and grin as
“DAMN!” went coffee sloshing.
“White folks scareya, hunh?”
Black only growled,
but soapface pranced and crowed
“think white!” “think snow!”
till sip of coffee made the chuckle](https://nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/manifold-cuny-api-store/store/resource/d/a/9/da98e393-0736-41da-a393-b1a6ca4080a2/attachment/91f4690eadf544ea3a7a53c78dff419a.jpg)
![Poem begun at 55 bis ...., Paris, 26 Aug. 1986, 12:50 p.m.—12:57, 6:40 p.m.—7:51, [*10:20 p.m.—12.18 a.m.*]
DAMN A FIRING SQUAD
by J. A. Emanuel
Damn a firing squad,
[Business lipped] metal-lipped and blind to what [before they see,
[their rifles raised like [undecipherable] firming,
[their barrels] rifle sights pointed like [verdicts] testimony
[sawed] cut up, [stitched together, knifed] regrooved, tooled into line
[their] trigger fingers light as coils [mechanism]
inside a clock stopped ticking —
[rag doll makers, turn their backs]
[of the goods they knew.]
Nothing-personal killers
Repeating the verdict.
[*12:57 stopped here (final line maybe: Damn a firing squad, its duty done.) Or Damn this daily business of the world, its duty done.) Or … if it be possible to damn the daily business…).*]
Firing squad, [proud]
[proud]
[shining up for a funeral,]
proud as the Arlington bugler,
[all] shining/[up]their boots for the funeral
for sharp salutes into the grieving air,
bullets for the hero
still soldering there.
Mountain firing squad,
bandoliered, [and whiskers] bearded as/[bushes]shrubbery,
scowling at [the] traitors
who are tongue-tied at [never understood] their treason,
who slump [sank] suddenly, like rag dolls,
against their tight tree trunks,
[*line by itself*]
[*who jerk like rag dolls and slump on their tree trunks*]
as if tired of it all.
Damn a firing squad--
if it be possible
to damn the daily business
of this world.](https://nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/manifold-cuny-api-store/store/resource/c/0/0/c005bf3d-c6b1-494d-bad5-16f72abfabe5/attachment/f7819c1f749ee9f1f653770ce33bf7fc.jpg)
![109
[*This poem, worked on in France, Poland, and Holland, developed from my poetry reading in Toulouse after which a colleague, Annice Mouyen (her later name, reported to me the 1st-stanza comments of some young man in the audience.*]
After the Poetry Reading, Black
His friend, the red hair and tight jeans,
took back her pen, left me THIS piece of cake:
“He’s disappointed”--meant this due half down the aisle,
himself so blond surveying,
counting those who cared--
added what she meant, sweeping off the crumbs
with “You’re not Black enough, he said.”
But do they EVER say, I thought,
just what they mean?--and didn’t even see
her fine retreat,
but went behind The Veil…
Back there with Truth, and Prosser, Turner,
[*Sojourner Truth, Gabriel Prosser (slave rebel), Nat Turner (slave rebel), Frederick Douglass, a truly great man.*]
whipped out my pocket Trans-s-lator
model Double-Oh-Daddy-oh-Douglass,
pushed chromobuttons “Blond” and “Reddish,”
laid it ‘longside the echoes in the aisle
till cake came back in Trans-s-lator slices
hard and sure as this?
“He’s disappointed:
wanted to frolic in the backyard of your mind,
smell weeds, rip up the tender shoots, peel back the shade,](https://nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/manifold-cuny-api-store/store/resource/0/4/4/04441135-b1b5-461e-a5c4-9f00d97124d4/attachment/06d02c7db6d0d1c247a4c787890e2568.jpg)
![113
till I politely shook it, groping elsewhere in my mind
through new poems Black enough
(the shock that twitched his face said so)
to leave a scar.
“He’s disappointed,” I thought.
And I knew
what I meant.
1976-77
1978
113
Racism in France
[*Invited to dine by Christian et Jeannine Renaud, Friend friends, I heard the wife say, after my comments on American racism, the opening line here. By no means naïve, they could not fully grasp my attitude; and this poem cannot fully express it. The only details that came from their 5th arrondissement apartment are the 1st line, the cherry pie, the daughter, and the TV to which she escaped.*]
“But there’s racism in France too.”
She said it almost tenderly,
lifting the dessert,
the glazed cherries gleaming on the pie,
it’s maiden slice for me, the guest.
I nodded, noncommittal, at the second piece,
their blondish daughter reaching for it,
[*Marie Helene Renaud, now married.*]
Quick, like almost nine years old,
her father’s eye a brake that could not hold;
her mother’s hand a lesson lost:
in serving him, it’s careful demonstration
was outmaneuvered in the in the nearest room
by Jacqueline’s favorite TV program,
[*I changed Marie-Helene’s name.*]
“Once Upon a Time,” her anarchy kept low.](https://nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/manifold-cuny-api-store/store/resource/0/5/4/05481b18-dbfe-4ac8-93aa-3b6043cccf30/attachment/0c0289c13f80b7f4f1b233f0155cb5ea.jpg)
