Nat's Lungs

How they cautiously ran down the hospital corridors, lungs and liver in a stainless steel dish, rampant with cancer, but not as bad as the “Duke’s”

How they placed the hands, of the Negro with the golden feathery light voice, tinged with raspiness, in the hand of the last real man, who ate red meat, three times a day, smoked Marlboro’s with no filter, feared no sun and who sweats, the permanent smell of gun powder

You two are joined, shallow pulses and chests cut open, one set of organs switched for another, only one of you can walk away from this man made fate

Nat entered at the hospital’s Negro entrance, and the “Duke” on the White side, and it was the Black people that were convinced, the one’s that knew why, the “Duke” was breathing so good, exhaling Negro breath