Montgomery, Alabama
Dismayed, I hand my purse to a sheriff,
who slides it toward the security scanner.
“Necessary evil,” he explains.
I pass through the metal detector,
wondering what device might penetrate
the lightless recesses of the human heart.
Who has come here brandishing a gun
to warrant such a protocol? This is sacred
space, this shrine of martyrs: mostly black
young men, a few whites, four girls
going about their Sunday morning business,
their innocence primary, their skin color
secondary. But they would not be dead
if their skin had been white–not
the bleak white of robes and pointed hoods
casting eerie shadows in flickering firelight,
but pretend-white: pink and beige and tan
flesh tones that pass for pure in benighted minds
steeped in lies about what makes us human.
When the small theater darkens,
we see torrents shooting from fire hoses,
hear the grief of a mother for her mangled son,
his young face once smooth, full of promise.
The names of the dead blossom and fade
to linger in memory, their sad perfume
escorting us as we grope our way back
toward fading daylight.
Patricia L. Hamilton is a professor of English at Union University in Jackson, TN. Her most recent work has appeared in Red River Review, Deep South Magazine, and Plainsongs. Winner of the 2015 Rash Award in Poetry, she has received two Pushcart nominations. Her first volume of poetry, The Distance to Nightfall, was published in 2014.