Series editor’s note: The tree in Tamara J. Madison’s poem is one that holds a blemished beauty, both life-giving and life-taking. The speaker addresses the tree right away, opening an ancient wound that perhaps all black bodies will know deep in their bones; here is a tree, a living, pulsating thing, filled with beauty, and wonder, and such greenness, and yet what does it hold? Another black body, another black body. – Mahtem Shiferraw
Elegy for Tree
to behold the beauty blemished
to cringe the jeering crowd
to flinch the blood-letting
to shudder beneath the cameras’ incessant flashings, suffer
the bristling rope
Oh, Tree!
you too will be frozen
horror in the photograph
obscenity printed on postcards
abomination framed as trophy
your branches lulled by the swinging Body
the Body that once knelt beneath your shade to pray
the Body that leaned against you sharing a first kiss
the Body that ran, toddler feet chasing butterflies
the Body squealing with joy
now a dangling body
bait for a murder of crows
Oh, Tree,
how your leaves claw the vapid air
as you weep this vile morning