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.

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 Link–choked, 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 ‘G.'”

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. But—

every time I'm in the heat

of a huddle. In a gym or

barbershop. When I swig

cold brews & watch

mob flicks by myself—

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 knuckle–serrated

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: