there is only the dark alley shepherding you home
there is only the boombox that has lived longer than your neighbor’s child
there is only the cd inside its back red and scratched
like it was tied to the whipping post
and forced to skip in the same spot every night
it plays:
you see the hood’s been good to me
you see the hood’s been good
you see the hood
you see the hood
you see
ODE TO DRAKE, ENDING WITH BLOOD IN A FIELD
yeah we finally learned how / to undress a whole season / with just our tongues / & pull back the sheets / with its taste / still in our mouths / & that’ll do ‘til / our lovers come back / or ‘til we find one / who will take us / despite our flaws & / how we can’t stop building monuments / to all of them / so that we never have / to apologize to anyone / not for all of / the gold / or the backwards / hats & new walk / in every city like / we run shit / but mufuckas never / loved us / they’ll never forget / about the teen dramas / mine weren’t on tv / so I don’t need tattoos / but I also curse / more on the eastside these days / I don’t want to be threatening / just feared / enough to never have to / make a fist / I learned this when / the dj got dragged / out his whip after / the block party for / playing too much marvin gaye / & not enough mobb deep / ‘cuz make love / when the time is right / but we still hood / don’t you ever / get it fucked up / & have you heard / what they say about men / who have swallowed / decades of summer? / & how they will come / for us with broken glass / in their teeth / & carry us on / their backs / to where the grass be / taller than them project buildings / once was / & they will cut open / our stomachs & / wear our sunlight / around their shoulders / like a mother’s arms / & summer won’t end / until after they have / forgotten the flags we planted.
THE SUMMER A TRIBE CALLED QUEST BROKE UP
1995. AFTER THE STREETLIGHTS DRINK WHATEVER DARKNESS IS LEFT
we stop throwin up jump shots cuz the rim seen better days
whole hood seen better days
whole hood bent & cracked & been
held together on a prayer despite the shallow bricks &
the homie says these the hours where black boys vanish
says we gotta find shelter before teeth grow through all this twilight
says one time I looked up at the moon and I haven’t seen my big brother since
says I guess this skin we wear expires with the sun
says we were born into curfew & I think
what a way to be young & alive
but then we hear the vibrant song of sirens cutting through the night
& even as boys our legs know to carry us to someone’s grandma’s crib
& we don’t yet know why & we don’t yet understand the way
a grandmother’s arms linger around our fragile limbs for a few seconds
longer when we finally make it home breathing & in the winter
danny lost track of time shooting free throws
& we had to bury all of the parts of him that the night left,
still brimming with bullets & then
none of the black boys
got new basketballs for
christmas.
XVI
didn’t nobody’s mama’s / mama / bite clean through the meat / of their bottom lip / while on they knees / in the corner of some white man’s kitchen / so their grandbaby could mow lawns / for four dollars an hour / during a hot and infinite summer / ‘til they hands became a poppy field / of blisters /
but oh well / god knows / we work ‘til we fly / god knows grandma worked / ‘til sudden wings grew out her back / and now sunday dinners ain’t the same / pops ain’t left the bedroom since july / when I got enough money for those new jordans / and it rained for two weeks / straight / we so Midwest / we so pretty sunrise / but bet there be a storm later / bet some thunder rattles the walls /
so I walk past them white air force ones / I’m on that all black shit again / I’m on that all my flaws be glowing when I’m held to the light shit again / but at least I clean up easy / at least I can run into a storm / and cover all manner of sins / at least I can wear these ‘til winter rides over the hills / and settles on the front porch / or ‘til all that snow melt / and I gotta walk through franklin park to get to jasmine house / cuz she love how fresh I got since last school year / now I got the whole hood grasping for this fly / got my kicks sinking / into the wet mud / got ancestors grabbing at my feet from their graves
DISPATCHES FROM THE BLACK BARBERSHOP, TONY’S CHAIR. 1996.
we all know a couple niggas doin a bid derrick ain’t comin home for another 20 cuz he shot up westside trevor’s whip after trevor slapped his baby’s mom yo tuck your lip so I can get this beard anyway trevor ain’t die at least not that night but someone gonna have to catch his ass slippin we from the streets we ain’t just gonna let niggas put hands on women we ain’t just gonna let niggas keep their hands we all got mamas you know but I don’t fuck with guns no more I got babies now you dig tilt your head into the light for me anyway yeah I got babies my nigga derrick ain’t gonna see his babies til they too heavy to lift til they forget that he got a body that don’t live in front of glass goddamn bruh I can’t be out here like that I got to eat I got to make this money I can’t give nobody a reason to wear my face on a tshirt you feel me police already want a nigga in a metal box or or a wooden box I ain’t gonna let myself get buried I saw derrick’s baby’s mom on east courtright digging a hole in the mud with her bare hands till they cracked wide open hold still I accidentally cut a nigga yesterday cuz he wouldn’t stop moving the blood ain’t stop for like four hours the blood was everywhere the blood was a river the blood ran on to the street was like that shit had legs I ain’t seen that much blood since I last fell asleep in my girl’s arms I ain’t seen that much blood since my first son was born and all the dreams I been havin since
I DON’T REMEMBER THE WHOLE SUMMER WHEN “DO THE RIGHT THING” DROPPED
but I do remember the night that police got a hold of Big Mike from North Linden & beat his face into the sweltering brick outside what used to be a Pizza Hut until it got robbed by some southside stickup kids two summers earlier & then my big brother said it had to shut down cuz niggas ain’t gonna get a gun held to they head for minimum wage & Mike used to deliver pizzas to the hood before the hood woke up in winter with new hungers & come spring, Mike was rockin’ a gold rope ‘round his neck thicker than the coils in a hangman’s knot & that’s when the cops on the eastside began to lick their lips & when their hands started to tremble while whispering ‘bout what they would do to him if they ever caught his ass, which maybe explains the way his bright blood painted the abandoned brick & the five police still pressing their heels into his face even after his right eye swung free from its socket, a grisly pendulum & my big brother left me home alone & hungry that night when the whole hood ran from their homes and set upon the police with any weapon they could find & they say that Mike’s face was a bloody & wet mess & they say he wasn’t breathing or they say he ain’t have a mouth anymore or they say all of him was a dark & gaping hole & they say the police grew fangs & they say the thick fur pushed through their shirts while Mike bled & earlier that day, my big brother hid his white jordans in his bookbag when he came back to the hood from his suburban job & he walked in the door & said we all one handful of gold away from a closed casket funeral & I don’t know how many mothers walked from the mouth of that summer childless but I could see the old Pizza Hut burning from my window & I could see a cop being dragged into the bushes by the stickup kids & isn’t it funny how art most imitates life when a black body is being drained of it? how easily we can imitate that which is never coming back again to claim its space? & when my big brother came home that night, he carried me to bed with a glass of warm milk & when a drop of blood fell from his knuckles & blended into the white of the glass, I did not ask who it belong
ed to.
WINDSOR TERRACE, 1990
Around the flickering old box that Jason’s granddad lifted from the corner of Aven and Barnett, we huddle our limbs to watch Mike Tyson’s legs become stiff oak
before he falls at the feet of Buster Douglas, who used to live right over there on Linden. Where, legend has it, he dunked so hard in a high school game that the air felt like a spaceship
took off right here in the streets and the ground ain’t stopped vibrating since. Some nights, we press our bodies to it and feel the hum run through the dark fat of our small legs,
rise and tell our mothers we can fill their fists with gold one day, buy our way out of this persistent stew of cold and sleeplessness.
On the television, Tyson is crawling around on the canvas like I’ve seen a man crawl on the living room floor, praying for enough change to keep a baby’s modest stomach
full for another night and maybe these two things are both a survival of violence. A man is shown his own blood and plummets to the earth
before trying to force himself to rise once more. When people pay money to watch, we call this sport. When people spill from their apartments
into a dim alley or a decaying school yard to watch, we call this the ghetto. But the cheering is the same. The excitement one gets in watching legs
that are not their own twitching in the dirt has never left us, ever since we watched the first funeral roll slow down the block.
And now Tyson is trying to force his mouthpiece between his unhinged and begging mouth while reaching for the ropes and
Jason’s grandfather’s trembling voice is whispering
get up boy, goddamn.
get up just one more time.
and he is almost looking past the television, into the night.
AIN’T NONE OF THE KIDS ON MY BLOCK GONNA DEBATE ABOUT THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
cuz
this 1 time
summer ’91 MJ jumped
From way out
n stayed
up there
so long swear we
thought grandpa
finally got sober
but he still smellin
like the sweat you
get from trynna
outrun some real heavy
shit that done finally caught
yo ass n MJ showin
James Worthy the rock in
one hand but then he
take it away n James lookin
like he just lost his mama in
the grocery store or
some shit but MJ still up there
n ain’t nobody else
wit ‘em so we all packed close to
the TV n when he finally
come down
Brandon big cousin
(who used to be showing
the whole hood
the rock
n how to get high
n never come down)
flushed his stash
down the toilet
n grabbed a ball
said “you lil niggas the Lakers”
n swear to god he flew
til the sun came up
ODE TO KANYE WEST IN TWO PARTS, ENDING IN A CHAIN OF MOTHERS RISING FROM THE RIVER
I wake up the morning after another award show and I hear
the calls surging over the mountains again
I hear ‘em
saying
hey
boy
you know we ain’t
rupture this country’s spine and unearth all its gold for you people to cocoon
your teeth in it
let your mouths spill all over our sacred trophies get fingerprints on the gilded
bark
of crowns
our men earn and set in the fire until they melt down into the bright and flesh of
another woman who will never cup your face
in her hands
and sing into your ear while the certain darkness of night turns chicago to a
muted child
you ain’t getting that again ‘til heaven calls for your body
after it been tied to a truck in east texas
by another diamond drowned jesus chain
and dragged through that jagged metal holy land so you can meet god clean
open and split
just give us your neck and we will carry you back to the sound
of your
mama’s voice
•
when I say I wanted the boy who cursed my dead mother’s name to become a ghost, I mean I wanted the bones of him to rattle on his father’s nightstand. I wanted another man to wake up haunted as the men who christened every morning screaming into the shell of whatever buried love still lived in the wood of the only home they could afford and isn’t that also another language for grief? there are only so many ways to dream about a corpse before you find new things to call sleep, or a new thing worth closing your eyes for the woman pulling you to the warmth of her living mouth or Nina Simone’s voice laid tight and naked over something your boys can rap to until there is enough money to move out the hood and into somewhere not creased with songs of the lifeless. Somewhere with food for everyone, even if it ain’t the fish our mothers cooked on Sundays, the smell of it crawling in under our bedroom doors and folding us in its arms. When I say I wanted the boy who cursed my dead mother’s name to become a ghost I mean I wanted the bones of uncooked fish to rattle in his throat while everyone he loved watched with their hands pressed underneath their chairs. I think I’m better now. I still watch a couple dance with their smiling children in a park and I want to tell them how easy it is for all of us to wake up next to someone who never will again. I am like you. I still want to feast on the happiest moments of strangers. I don’t know what this makes men like us except bound to our loneliness, crawling on our hands and knees again through the southern mud that women we loved once pushed between their black toes, until we reach the river. press our lips to the bank. whisper their names into the delicate brown earth and pray the water parts this time. Every mother we gave over to death, walking from its cool mouth. A wet and thrashing catfish in their arms. They will ask
have you eaten, child?
you closed your eyes
during another one of my sweet songs
and I thought you would
never wake
ALL OF THE BLACK BOYS FINALLY STOPPED PACKING SWITCHBLADES
since the summer of ‘98 when
danny went into the pit and got his front teeth
divorced from the rest of his mouth by the fist
of some white boy from the side of town
where no one buries a boy that came into the world
after they did and no one ever has to swallow
their own blood and pray that it will keep them
fed until morning
so danny told us that he was going to
go home with someone’s teeth even if they weren’t
the ones that he came here with
because how many things have we boys had ripped
from our mouths and never replaced by anyone?
how much of our language has been pulled over the tongues
of everyone but us?
reparations were sought in dark alleys with a blade sharp
enough to scare a jaw open and a prayer out of a sinner’s
mouth which explains how the white boy wept
and called for his father when being pressed
into the brick with danny’s foot against his neck while
we watched until danny finally let the boy
go and we ran back out east towards our homes and maybe
it was the way the rain howled or maybe where
we come from we see everything drowning in red anyway
or maybe there is no other way to explain the haste with which I
make my pockets barren before leaving the house
even today
or why
my wife needs a bigger purse to carry such weight
for the both of us
but when the police came for us that night
we did not hear a sound until danny’s blade fell out his pocket
and the bullets that followed
because I guess anything can be a gun if the darkness
surrounding it is hungry enough
or at least that’s what I’ve been told when
the bodies of black boys thrash against what
little life they have left tethering them to the earth
and isn’t that what we’ve always been fed? that it is
just like the nighttime
to rename everything that moves
into a monster?
ON JUKEBOXES
the ones on sheridan ave stopped playing motown in the fall once the frat boys found out they could drink for cheap & stumble down the block loud & pulsating with the night the way our fathers used to when this side of town was still thick with their fingerprints & so we take the cash we won over on the north courts, where jason ain’t missed a jump shot since his big brother got outta prison & started to slow dance with them corners again, & we go to the quik mart to buy some quarter water that don’t quench anything except our desire to be black & young & spend the money we earned with our own sweat & I think something about that is also black & our parents ain’t seen us since morning stretched over the hood & all these decaying rooftops but we still hop in tyler’s mama’s ford & go down to sheridan ave to see the old head who sits outside monk’s bar with a newport forever swinging from his bottom lip so low it defy gravity & for the right price, he been known to sing whatever marvin gaye song he’s sober enough to remember & so we take what change we got left & put it in his cup & he starts in on some marvin & the words “brother, brother, brother / there’s far too many of you dying” crawl out from his lips & grow legs & a whole body right there on the sidewalk & it wraps itself around us & jason is bent over & heaving & I try not to look & tell myself that it’s because we played eight games straight earlier & summer came through the hood this year & decided to stay too long & wear out its welcome like tyler’s grandma in his family’s 2-bedroom apartment but that’s why he been staying at my crib lately & I think to tell my boys we should go back there before we run into midnight & the questions that come with it & before I can say anything some capital university kids run up & take the old head’s change cup & run away yelling this ain’t the side of town for y’all anymore & when I get accepted there in the winter, me & jason stop talking.