Creative Response

Dear William Zantzinger,

I know about your garage burning down. I know about the county taking away your properties due to unpaid taxes. I know that you continued to collect rent from poor black people on these properties for years after you no longer owned them, and proceeded to sue them for back rent. But the worst thing I know about you, Mr. Zantzinger, is how you brutally assaulted and killed the innocent, Hattie Carroll.

I have to start off by thanking Bob Dylan for shedding some light on this despicable crime or else I wouldn’t be able to send you this letter. I have so much anger built up inside of me that it is hard for me to put it on paper without appearing to be too threatening. The last thing I would want to do is break the law and somehow be associated with the likes of someone like you. By being a songwriter myself, and in honor of Bob Dylan, I thought it would be best if I were to express my true feelings in the form of a poem. However, I just found out that you died a month ago in early January. It doesn’t really matter if this never reaches you, William. It fulfills me to simply get it off my chest.

It started that night on February nine
Loaded off bourbon and sipping on wine
A servant for you and mother of eleven
Served her last drink and left us for heaven

Above the law and the race you despise
With your whiskey-soaked breath and your blood-shot eyes
You killed a poor woman with a fifty cent cane
That cost us a mother and a friend, all in vain

Drunk or not, I know you remember
What led to your sentence in early September
A small price to pay in a white collar jail
With a system in place that’s set up to fail

Hattie deserved to live past that day
When your hateful soul took her life away
Beyond Hattie’s color, she bled just like you
How do we tell her children the truth

I’m writing this letter, but a month too late
On January third, you met your own fate
But not for your actions inside that hotel
Please say hello to Hitler in hell