Is it a lynching?

Is your body hanging like low, strange fruit

Is your family strange fruit with you too

On that tree, is there fallen leaves?

Can you breathe?

Do you remember what you were doing before

Were you kissing your wife and

Saying your last goodbyes

Your children, uncle and aunts and loved ones

Do you remember them?

Is your blood boiling under coal, black skin?

Is your throat cracking and crumbling into pieces

Preventing speech, like silenced hymns

Is your pale soul leaving your ghost body

a result of unkindness

Is it?