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Black Codes

By Shane McCrae
Poetry•Vol. XXX No. 1 (Spring 2017)

Law said he couldn’t a

Black man he couldn’t

Be unemployed the law

 

said if he was a

Black man if he was

idle in the day caught

 

in the middle of the day

Out in the day     / He ain’t

have no contract     with no white man

 

To work a white man’s land

A black man     he

could be arrested and his labor sold     / To pay the fine

 

if he was idle in the day

Law said     he was a

Black man he was     once he had signed a contract was

 

The white man’s used the word

servant law said

The white man was

 

His     master said he got to work

Sunrise to sundown

Six days a week     but

 

On Sundays he was free

a black man if he was

to not     / Work on Sundays

 

Law said on Sundays if he was

a black man he was free

Law set him Sundays free

 

If he was free     / Law said he ought to

Consult the law if he don’t know

Who owns him when who owns him

Shane McCrae
Shane McCrae teaches at Oberlin College and at Spalding University’s low-residency MFA in Writing Program. His most recent books are In the Language of My Captor (forthcoming from Wesleyan University Press in 2017) and The Animal Too Big to Kill (Persea Books 2015). He has received a Whiting Writer’s Award, a fellowship from the NEA, and a Pushcart Prize.

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