American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin [“Probably twilight ...”]

Darkness appears throughout “Probably twilight makes blackness dangerous.” In lines 1 and 2, “blackness,” and “darkness” refer to the physical kinds of darkness, either the absence of light or the saturation of color. The speaker uses three different types of description to explore the connotations of the absence of light: "twilight" is a visual murk, "blackness" is a racial marker, while "darkness" carries a valence of fear, evil, and bad intentions associated with the dangerous unknown. The speaker wonders why the uncertainty of “twilight” would render “blackness dangerous / Darkness” (Lines 1-2) in the mind of a would-be assassin, suggesting that other kinds of darkness can avoid such a characterization.

The events in Sanford, Ferguson, and other places of racial violence remain clouded in euphemistic language: “something happened” (Lines 4-6). The danger heightens in present, as the unspeakable “happens / Almost everywhere” (Lines 7-8). “Someone is prey” (Line 9), but the speaker refuses to guess who will become prey in any specific interaction.

Images of darkness return in the “dark blue skin” (Lines 12, 13) passed down between father and son in the last lines of the poem. This time, when the first line of the poem repeats across lines 11 and 12, the speaker omits the adjective “dangerous” (Line 1) so that “darkness” (Line 12) becomes the chief descriptor for “blackness” (Line 11). Here, the metaphor displaces the physical meaning, which would be redundant. The speaker observes how the haze of twilight, the darkening of day, of sight, and of minds, makes blackness hard to comprehend. In uncertain terrain, observer biases emerge. The “gate” in line 12 opens both ways in the “encounters” (Lines 2 and 9) where “someone is prey” (Line 9).