2017 Poetry & Storytelling Competition Volume 2 | Page 25

The Trunk

Community Artist: Maria James-Thiaw M.S., MFA

Poet and Professor

I had to leave New Orleans in the trunk of a car

after days of poking at Jim Crow.

They called us “zip dandy,” “agitators,” “yankees”

reported our checkerboard groove fest

in the hotel --

blacks and whites harmonizing like piano keys.

It was Fat Tuesday in the Big Easy,

but there's nothing easy about Civil Rights work, so

I had to leave New Orleans in the trunk of a car.

My hi-ho Silver moment wasn’t like

the ones on TV.

The Impala pulled up and

legs swung over wrought iron balcony.

Thrown like Mardi Gras beads into a

blanket of blackness.

The growl of the engine

the bump bump boom

of the rocky ground, the hollow hum of the radio

ran over the hoot and holler of Klan

on our tails.

I was knocked around but safe,

tucked away in the Impala's arms.

I had to leave New Orleans in the trunk of the car,

because my last ride left its footprint on my psyche.

I was the passenger, my white friend, driving.

The fuzz pulled him out the window,

beat him bloody,

called him kike and kick, kick, kicked him.

Pulled our pixie-haired friend from the back,

beat her for “looking like a boy,”

made me watch and learn why a

Negro should never take a front seat.

I left New Orleans in the trunk of a car.