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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://cuny.manifoldapp.org/system/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://cuny.manifoldapp.org/system/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://cuny.manifoldapp.org/system/resource/c/0/0/c005bf3d-c6b1-494d-bad5-16f72abfabe5/attachment/f7819c1f749ee9f1f653770ce33bf7fc.jpg)
![133
Emmett Till1
I hear a whistling
Through the water
Little Emmett
Won’t be still.
He keeps floating
Round the darkness,
Edging through
The silent chill.
Tell me, please,
That bedtime story
Of the fairy
River Boy
Who swims forever,
Deep in treasures,
Necklaced in
A coral toy.
1963
1963
1 In 1955, Till, a fourteen-year-old from Chicago, was lynched in Mississippi for allegedly making improper advances toward a white woman.
[The Norton Introduction to Literature, Fourth Edition (1986), page 745, handles the factual background by this footnote.]](https://cuny.manifoldapp.org/system/resource/3/3/0/33063606-d5de-4747-a896-c5c314852b44/attachment/2a454279405e8f9e1690a0df368691de.jpg)
