We Don’t Hang Ourselves from Trees

Even the Trees Know this

Photo Source: Wagon Wheel, American Elm Tree

A Poem:

Black people do not want to be strange fruit

We don’t want our bodies to hang low,

swinging in a breeze. Not in 2026.

Lynching should have ended over 70 years ago.

We don’t want our bodies to be stretched

until we snap the breath from our bodies. We don’t

look for the rope, tie it into a noose,

throw it over a branch, place the noose

around our necks & hang ourselves.

We don’t.

That is a history, a strategy,

an execution not invented by us — only

used against us. Black bodies, swinging

against their will. Under a Southern sun,

under a Northern moon, under a Western sky,

along an Eastern shore. In a park, on a trail,

on a beach, by an apartment building. Black bodies

hung in places not of our choosing. We didn’t

hang ourselves — we were killed.