In the Event Of

Officer how you know I’m dancing is the body

-cam. Look, I’m riding centuries of whips, the first half

Of the ghost, arms out the window up, the second half

Arms flat on the pavement, palms down, now the ghost is whole

My arms stretched forward, like I’m bowing, but if I

Were standing, stretched above my head. Officer how

You know I’m dead is that I seem to bow to you

Copyright © 2021 by Shane McCrae. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 1, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“I wrote this poem in protest against the almost-continuous killing of Black people by the state and its agents, and as an explanation of a gesture such agents might mistakenly think they recognize.”
—Shane McCrae