Page 53 - WTP Vol. V #1

Three kites. A paper air plane tossed from the bed of an old pickup truck. Gossamer and fishing line. A string of barbed wire grown through the limbs of the oldest tree of a farm. Who decides if a tree
From Trees
isn’t good enough? When its limbs just won’t do? A sheriff? His deputy? He who owns the rope? Who asks such questions? In the photo leading up to the last hanging in my hometown, a black man
is posing with authorities with what looks like some of a smile on his young face. How can this be
we must ask? Did he not know his fate, tricked
by the photographer for a nice newspaper grin?
They hanged him, not by the gallows, or by a tree, but off a bridge along the most notorious city street, drawing carnival mood crowds from card games, and the prostituting, and fights. And the usual
shootouts calmed for the festivities with the Klan in town in force, unhooded, hiding as they were in their gentlemanly suits and ties and fedoras. Was he given choice of tree or bridge, or grimace
or grin, when gravity took him by the body there in front of the families, boys and girls, mothers and fathers? Who smiled in the crowd? Anyone? For the rest of the day, who could manage grins,
noticing young black boys of town running over bridges, or looking down into the waters for fish, or laughing at distorted reflections of themselves?
Questions Hanging
Thacker’s poetry can be found in over sixty journals and magazines. He is the author of Mountain Mysteries: The Mystic Traditions of Appalachia (Overmoun- tain Press) and the poetry chapbooks Voice Hunting and the recently published Memory Train (Finishing Line Press). His the forthcoming full collection of poetry is Drifting in Awe.
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