Maybe the Saddest Thing (3 page)
Eric Dolphy squeals, leaps, and dives inside my abdomen. Roy Ayers kneads and vibrates my chest. Freddie Hubbard's wail could crack glass, my ribs. Pharoah Sanders shivers all over my face. Every wax-gash, knick, and hiss. Every cut. Every record pierces skin. I tap. I drone. I thrash. I scream. I listen to the
Freedom Now Suite
. It sounds like a welted voice wincing at the basement's night. A voice my father hears too.
He does not cave the basement door. He walks a dirge down those steps. Gently strokes my neck. Asks, Why are you crying, son? Dad, I ache. Because I've been down here forever.
Driving east on 45
Red & white pines / resemble neat rows
Of nooses / hung from navy sky / knotting
All / the oxygen surrounding your frame.
Can even one of ten friends see / you struggle
For space inside / a gutted speck of forest?
Does anyone notice / the way trees shrink
Breath inside / your tiny throat?
Someone sees / makes a joke about death
That lashes your spine / with cold / pimpled fear.
Nightfall chatters in space / between lips
& your stomach / is stuffed with white teeth.
The next morning smells of quelled fire.
The next morning sings deliverance.
What do you want me to say?
When I'm riding shotgun in a shiny Escaladeâ
black speck stuck to a frat-white interior.
When rap parts automatic windowsâ
becomes integration's dangerous sound track.
When every mouth in the whip but mine spits
the score's every n wordânoteâI get all warm
& fuzzy inside! I feel acutely American.
Remember that Sunday at the AME church?
You belted “Lift Every Voice & Sing”
like it was yoursâcarried the choir
when the second verse dropped. I pledged
allegiance to the backgroundâswayed
in silence with the lively congregation.
After service, you polished off two plates
of collards, sucked neck bone marrow.
I piled on potato salad. Stuck to cottage cheese.
Do you recall how hard rain
drenched everything that night
on the curb outside of our dorm?
We passed Paul Masson while I cursed
Christy Carmichael's parents. Told you
how I'd sat in their kitchen, pretending
to admire flag-heavy furnishings. Imitated
the exact pitch of their laughs
after Christy said I was her tutor
for Early Western Civ. (I laughed then.
Now, I'm chuckling in a different hueâ
shaking my head at that
crack about feeling American.)
They asked if I knew “gangbangers.”
Had cousins in prison. Bullet-riddled kin.
I wept while telling you this. & you held me
until I stopped. Matt, you know the score.
You must think I'm some sort of wigger.
Wanna know if me & the word are acquainted.
Wanna know why I won't say it in front of you.
You want me to share it, old friend.
But you could never be my nigga.
You don't have what it takes.
You every-single-syllable-articulating, left-his-mojo-in-the-dojo,
proper-posture-having, overzealous, no-break-dancing chump.
You unseasoned shrimp-fried, chivalrous sucka.
You pelvically challenged or something?
You Rubik's Cube.
You couldn't learn Cool if it came with an illustrated manual.
You eat soul food with chopsticks.
You black Orient. You occidental Africa.
You would rather kiss a man's Converse than sport a pair.
You thought that Cuban Linkâchoked, shiny-suited Harlem
Shogun came straight out of a comic book. & you were right.
You mastered the art of using a black belt as a belt.
You talk in riddles:
Search for art in everything. In fortune cookies.
You find empty fortune cookies like life: containers
fitting for your art.
You have reached the final level: when the mind becomes the self
that guides without archetypal help.
I bet you keep LeRoi & Levis on the same bookshelf.
Maybe it's the half
communion wafer
yellow moon in my eye.
Maybe it's the thug wind
mingling fragrant herb
firing shots
across a synapse
that takes me back
to summer. Outkast.
“Return of the âG.'”
I was a bone, head
caught between middle
& high, private & public
school. Me & B.
used to run the drain
in his father's fifths of Crown.
Used to do C-sections
on Swisher Sweets, talk shit
about Rodney's chipmunk
teeth. & deep down
I must have been aching
to knock one out. Me & B.
were rocking back & forth
on plastic porch chairs
when Ypsi's no. 1 gossip
approached. Sheila said
Rodney was talking reckless
about my younger brother.
I inhaled a pulsing red fist
from the midsection, blew
smoke through bull nostrils,
knew exactly what to do.
We placed a few calls.
Told every teen on the block
they should come to the park
around noon. I grabbed
my pigskin, set teams
of five. B. snapped
a short bullet pass
to Rodney &
five guys nailed his back
to the grass; rained down
sharp laughs & elbows
to ribs. Teed off
on his groin.
I tried to drill a hole in his face.
Blasted my knuckles
against his incisors
again & again & again. &
I can't go on talking
to you this way
any longer. All this time
I've been working up
to say something about
that liminal place between
manhood & cartoon-
cool. Something stupid
like that. Rodney,
I chased you through
cul-de-sacs & lawns. Chased
you west through the state
of Michigan. & still haven't
figured out how to finish
this letter. I just want
you to know. & I understand
this is no consolation. Butâ
every time I'm in the heat
of a huddle. In a gym or
barbershop. When I swig
cold brews & watch
mob flicks by myselfâ
Rodney, you chase after me.
You kick my ass.
You nail me square
to the ground.
You see yourself in pastels, neatly groomed
Tossing a Frisbee in a college brochure.
Puberty was kind to your pores.
Three Bambi-esque beauty marks
Punctuate your baby face.
What you want is a box cutter's calling card
Stapled to your cheek. Brass knuckleâserrated
Jawlines. Tiny Band-Aids over gashed eyelids.
Most days you wash in the sink, head slumped,
Refusing a smudge-free reflection.
Today you lean hard into that bathroom mirror
& your blank, brown face
Becomes the image of an image, pixilated.
You see a man who pees standing up.
when the brown jock uprooted from the Bronx
beats his teacher at literary charades. Flared nose
pointing toward a ceiling, the teacher cants dense
lines of verse, of which the homie always knows the authors.
What you may recall is the kid's Scottish mentor
sauntering into an assembly, squashing plagiarism allegations
and saving the brown jock from expulsion.
You're probably thinking this is about white men.
About gold-encrusted measuring sticks. How in the world
outside that movie, those men could pass for twins. You're right
I was wrong. Their game, like a literary “name that tune.”
Guess which dead white dude poet wrote this.
Wrong
again. Do you figure a brown jock from the Bronx
could grasp geometry behind an arc or pool cue?
From whom or what does he learn dead white dude poets?
Here I am, stumped about whose brother I be. I think
the teacher was gaming. I think the jock was just playing,
but then, how does one finesse canon?
for Raleigh Lee
My friend Raleigh always jokes
You must know every black guy
in Bloomington, Indiana
because I break my neck to nod
when one crosses our path, as if
to say: It's good to see myself
for the first time again. As if
to say: It's good to see you.
Let me start over.
Riding the campus bus with Raleigh
one day, my head lifted from its ledge
and landed at the feet of a mannequin
who peered straight through me.
And that's just what I thought too:
He's a mannequin black man; sitting there
all stiff in his cowboy boots and straight-leg
Levi's. He's a mannequin black man.
Too stilted to acknowledge himself
when he sees me. And by that I meant:
