God bless them ... I am innocent
--Ed Johnson, March 19, 1906
While the sheriff was locked up
in the bathroom, the lynch mob
hoisted up the young black man
under a camelback truss cross-
beam with thick hemp girdered
around his neck. What was he
thinking as they let him hang?
Was he conscious as they spat
piercing epithets along with fifty
bullets? They cracked his skull
with five more point-blank shots.
The innocent man was only guilty
of being black. They charged him
with rape, but the only rape was
that of his dignity. How dare he
compliment a white woman who
disgraced herself with lies! They
killed a man whose words still echo
forgiveness in the spaces under
the Walnut Street Bridge, even
the unspoken ones they know
not what they do were inscribed
on his last breath.
John C. Mannone has poems in Artemis, North Dakota Quarterly, Poetry South, and others. He was awarded a Jean Ritchie Fellowship (2017) in Appalachian literature and served as the celebrity judge for the National Federation of State Poetry Societies (2018). His full-length collections are Disabled Monsters (Linnet’s Wings Press, 2015), Flux Lines (Linnet’s Wings Press, 2022), Song of the Mountains (Middle Creek Publishing, 2023, nominated for the Weatherford Award), and Sacred Flute (Iris Press, 2024). He edits poetry for Abyss & Apex and other journals. A physics professor, he teaches mathematics and creative writing in a Knoxville, Tennessee high school.
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