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49 Train Ride Hard to picture those sweet boys nameless black boys in the gut of a slow moving freight train crawling towards a new place. Hard to see them take turns on the pinkness of those white girls. still, i see the faces of those two smiling on the bright newsprint, making strong men wince at the thought of this travesty, their indulgent day-dreams of rocking to some decadent beat of the train, nine ejaculations, nine fallen selves, howling, howling. Don’t have a mind for names, but i learnt the names of the two: ruby Bean and Victoria Price, like icons of a time past, heard them carry like songs in that hall there on 155th street and rockland Palace, where we gathered to pray for them scottsboro boys, 50 to pray for their souls, forgiveness for their dumb sin of watching those girls with fiddling and more on their minds, with the taste of taboo salivating their mouths. Victoria Price and ruby Dean. i strengthen the pure resolve of my ways, the intact hymen of my twenty-year old womb, not loose and wayward like those crazy two. We cherish the dignity of our righteousness gleaming white beside the white girls’ sin. No tears for the children, tears are hard to come by when you’ve see boys gathered and whipped and worse for looking too hard, for thinking of touching, for even smelling and turning away from the breeze left behind by white young girls like those two. all you feel to say is old people’s wisdom: “You make your bed, you lay in it. You know better.” Can’t believe those scottsboro boys had no idea what history they was messing with rocking on that old freight train, cutting through the heart of america. ...

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