The speaker is walking through the woods on morning when he comes across the gruesome scenes of a lynching which occurred long enough ago that the victim is nothing but a pile of bones. He specifically describes the items of clothing that is both a reminder of the human being and evidence of the crime: a lone shoe, a tie, torn shirt and bloody pants. This catalog suddenly shifts, however, to include some surprisingly out of place items: extinguished matches, cigars, cigarettes, garish lipstick, tar feathers and the smell of gasoline. It turns out that this is not a poem about a traditional simple lynching, but rather a particularly heinous version of what is already an abomination: the victim was tarred and feathered and then set on fire as was hanging from a tree. From that point of revelation, the verse transforms into a nightmarish horror story in which the process is reverse: skin reattaches to the bones, the bones reformulate into his own skeleton and the sights and sounds of the lynching and the joyful entertainment it provided to perpetrators and onlookers come palpably to life. And, inevitably, the speaker becomes the victim, describing the lynching as it is occurring to him.
“I have Seen Black Hands”
This is another poem by Wright that is dependent upon the simple power of cataloging a list of things. Lists and catalogs are among common poetic tropes favored by Beat writers, but Wright is not himself a Beat poet. Beat poets were highly influenced by African-American writers and perhaps Wright was one of the major influences on this device. “I have Seen Black Hands” is essentially little but a cataloging of list of things which the speaker has seen millions of black hand do: working in fields and factories, playing games and sports, holding weapons while marching off to war, holding the pink slip notification of losing jobs, defending their lives against oppressors, slapped away from items they have been told is not theirs to have, struggling to loosen themselves from the noose of lynching and, concluding the poem on a note of optimism and hope: intertwined with the white hands joining them in the revolt against denial of civil rights.
“King Joe”
This is a 13-stanza work of verse that holds an unusual place in Wright’s body of work. It was not written specifically at a poem, but rather as lyrics to a song. The music was supplied by the legendary Count Basic and the first famous African-American actor—Paul Robeson—made his debut as a blues singer when it was originally recorded. The title character make this a four-star collaboration as the subject is about boxing king Joe Louis.
“Everywhere Burning Waters Rise”
This is a symbol-laden work of a popular genre for African-American poets in the 1930’s: communist poetry. It is a notification that that the specter of workers’ rights is spreading its influence from factories to farm and from skyscrapers to tenements. The coming fire of freedom and economic quality is situated in symbolism from tiny red pools to flowing streams of molten lava. Capitalism is portrayed as golden pillars melting under the heat of the coming revolution.
“The FB Eye Blues”
The tone of this rhyming verse is surprisingly light considering its provenance: the author’s increasing frustration as being under surveillance by J. Edgar Hoover’s boys in the bureau. The repetition of lines like: “Now kittens love milks / and rats love cheese” and “My mama told me /a rotten egg’ll never fry” subtly reveal the intensifying frustration of the repetition of discovery that the FBI is always there someone, hiding in the shadows, watching, and keep a record of every smallest detail of his daily life.
