Growing up black white trash it’s not that you
Are and you never think you are
Part of the home you go back home to
Twenty years later and two thousand miles
Lord just to look at it
Growing up black white trash you live
Lord in a separate world you live a-
lone in a separate world and you don’t really even
Live in that world you live where your hope goes
like any child you follow it like any child
You aren’t prepared to follow it
Lord restless through and you say yes to
Anything anybody wants to / Do with your body you
follow your hope
Through anybody’s Lord desire
Like any no one’s child
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Shane McCrae is the author of four books of poetry, most recently The Animal Too Big to Kill, and the recipient of a Whiting Writer’s Award and a fellowship from the NEA. He teaches at Oberlin College.
“That You Use Your Body To Escape Your Skin” was originally published in “Do You Love Me?” (TLR, Spring 2015).