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In nineteen sixty-three, May twenty-eight,
three youngsters in a Woolworths five-and-dime 
sat down and asked for coffee. This was war.
In Jackson, Mississippi, way back when,
outrageous things like this riled up the pack.

The photos still exist. You feel the hate.
To ask for coffee, then, was such a crime,
so unacceptable to local law 
that men (look at the photos – they’re all men) 
could not restrain themselves. Attack, attack!

With ketchup, mustard, butter they went straight
to smear the interlopers with their slime:
what else are coffee-grounds and soda for?
The heroes (in the age of Colonel Glenn,
the Right Stuff mattered) took down from the rack

more gunge. These sons of the Magnolia State
poured vinegar in solemn pantomime
(one wiped molasses on the young man’s jaw).
What caused this ritual? This zoo-like zen?
The guests had the effrontery to be black.

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