Four Days

1 6 Y F O U R D A Y S C O R N E L I U S E A D Y Since it didn’t happen the evening Of whatever the hell Emmett Till did; Whistle, or wave, or simply galled His throat to shoot the breeze Into the face of white, southern Womanhood, I’d like to imagine he walked out Of that store, into the hot Mississippi Air, with the lope of a bank robber, Swinging his bag of loot. The dare won, his point made; I’m not from here, and where I’m from, This shit is crazy. And nothing happened, the first two nights, And no one came the third. That’s how long he had To be a new kind of Negro. ...