Incident

Incident by Countee Cullen is a poem that to me is very poignant. The poem starts off very innocently talking about a little girl seeing a smiling little boy. The feeling of innocent lust is one that everyone can relate to and keeps the poem with a relatively easy going mood. However, it takes a change when the speaker says "And so I smiled, but he poked out His tongue, and called me, 'Nigger.' To me this was a rather shocking turn in the poem but one that makes the poem very poignant. To people of my generation it seems so wrong that you would just go up to someone and call them senseless term like that. But, it was not too long ago when that was commonplace. It just goes to remind me that not all is still perfect about our country and probably never will be.