Don't Call Us Dead

Poems

GRAYWOLF PRESS

Contents

summer, somewhere


somewhere, a sun. below, boys brown
as rye play the dozens & ball, jump

in the air & stay there. boys become new
moons, gum-dark on all sides, beg bruise

-blue water to fly, at least tide, at least
spit back a father or two. i won't get started.

history is what it is. it knows what it did.
bad dog. bad blood. bad day to be a boy

color of a July well spent. but here, not earth
not heaven, we can't recall our white shirts

turned ruby gowns. here, there's no language
for officer or law, no color to call white.

if snow fell, it'd fall black. please, don't call
us dead, call us alive someplace better.

we say our own names when we pray.
we go out for sweets & come back.

* * *

this is how we are born: come morning
after we cypher/feast/hoop, we dig

a new one from the ground, take
him out his treebox, shake worms

from his braids. sometimes they'll sing
a trapgod hymn (what a first breath!)

sometimes it's they eyes who lead
scanning for bonefleshed men in blue.

we say congrats, you're a boy again!
we give him a durag, a bowl, a second chance.

we send him off to wander for a day
or ever, let him pick his new name.

that boy was Trayvon, now called RainKing.
that man Sean named himself i do, i do.

O, the imagination of a new reborn boy
but most of us settle on alive.

* * *

sometimes a boy is born
right out the sky, dropped from

a bridge between starshine & clay.
one boy showed up pulled behind

a truck, a parade for himself
& his wet red train. years ago

we plucked brothers from branches
peeled their naps from bark.

sometimes a boy walks into his room
then walks out into his new world

still clutching wicked metals. some boys
waded here through their own blood.

does it matter how he got here if we're all here
to dance? grab a boy! spin him around!

if he asks for a kiss, kiss him.
if he asks where he is, say gone.

* * *

dear air where you used to be, dear empty Chucks
by front door, dear whatever you are now, dear son

they buried you all business, no ceremony.
cameras, t-shirts, essays, protests

then you were just dead. some nights
i want to dig you up, bury you right.

scrape dirt until my hands are raw
& wounds pack themselves with mud.

i want to dig you up, let it rain twice
before our next good-bye.

dear sprinkler dancer, i can't tell if I'm crying
or i'm the sky, but praise your sweet rot

unstitching under soil, praise dandelions
draining water from your greening, precious flesh.

i'll plant a garden on top
where your hurt stopped.

* * *

just this morning the sun laid a yellow not-palm
on my face & i woke knowing your hands

were once the only place in the world.
this very morning i woke up

& remembered unparticular Tuesdays
my head in your lap, scalp covered in grease

& your hands, your hands, those hands
my binary gods. Those milk hands, bread hands

hands in the air in church hands, cut-up fish hands
for my own good hands, back talk backhands, hurt more

than me hands, ain't asking no mo' hands
everything i need come from those hands

tired & still grabbing grease, hum
while she makes her son royal onyx hands.

mama, how far am i
gone from home?

* * *

do you know what it's like to live
on land who loves you back?

no need for geography
now, we safe everywhere.

point to whatever you please
& call it church, home, or sweet love.

paradise is a world where everything
is sanctuary & nothing is a gun.

here, if it grows it knows its place
in history. yesterday, a poplar

told me of old forest
heavy with fruits i'd call uncle

bursting red pulp & set afire
harvest of dark wind chimes.

after i fell from its limb
it bandaged me in sap.

* * *

i loved a boy once & once he made me
a red dirge, skin casket, no burial.

left me to become a hum in a choir
of bug mouths. he was my pastor

in violet velvet, my night nurse
my tumor, my sick heart, my bad blood

all over his Tims. he needed me
so much he had to end me.

i was his fag sucked into ash
his lungs my final resting place.

my baby turned me to smoke
choked on my name 'til it was gone.

i was his secret until i wasn't
alive until not. outside our closet

i found a garden. he would love it
here. he could love me here.

* * *

dear brother from another
time, today some stars gave in

to the black around them
& i knew it was you.

my ace, my g, my fellow
kingdomless king

they've made you a boy
i don't know

replaced my friend
with a hashtag.

wish i could tell you
his hands are draped

from my neck, but his
shield is shaped like

a badge. i leave revenge
hopelessly to God.

* * *

last night's dream was a red June
filled with our mouths sticky

with sugar, we tiny teethed brown beasts
of corner stores, fingers always

dusted cheeto gold. do you remember
those yellow months? our calves burned

all day biking each other around on pegs
taking turns being steed & warrior

at the park we stormed like distant shores
our little ashy wars, shoes lit with blue sparks

those summers we chased anybody
who would say our names, jumped fences

just to prove we could jump, fingers stained
piff green with stank, riding around

barely old enough to ride around, dreaming
a world to conquer? i wish you ended me, Sweet Cain.

* * *

if we dream the old world
we wake up hands up.

sometimes we unfuneral a boy
who shot another boy to here

& who was once a reaper we make
a brother, a crush, a husband, a duet

of sweet remission. say the word
i can make any black boy a savior

make him a flock of ravens
his body burst into ebon seraphs.

this, our handcrafted religion.
we are small gods of redemption.

we dance until guilt turns to sweat.
we sweat until we flood & drown.

don't fret, we don't die. they can't kill
the boy on your shirt again.

* * *

the forest is a flock of boys
who never got to grow up

blooming into forever
afros like maple crowns

reaching sap-slow toward sky. watch
Forest run in the rain, branches

melting into paper-soft curls, duck
under the mountain for shelter. watch

the mountain reveal itself a boy.
watch Mountain & Forest playing

in the rain, watch the rain melt everything
into a boy with brown eyes & wet naps —

the lake turns into a boy in the rain
the swamp — a boy in the rain

the fields of lavender — brothers
dancing between the storm.

* * *

when i want to kiss you
i kiss the ground.

i shout down sirens.
they bring no safety.

my king turned my ache
my one turned into my nothing.

all last month was spent in bed
with your long gone name.

what good is a name
if no one answers back?

i know when the wind feels
as if it's made of hands

& i feel like i'm made of water
it's you trying to save me

from drowning in myself, but i can't
wed wind. i'm not water.

* * *

when i dream of you i wake
in a field so blue i drown.

if you were here, we could play
Eden all day, but fruit here

grows strange, i know before me
here lived something treacherous.

whose arms hold you now
after my paradise grew from chaos?

whose name do you make
thunder the room?

is he a good man?
does he know my face?

does he look like me?
do i keep him up at night?

* * *

how old am i? today, i'm today.
i'm as old as whatever light touches me.

some nights i'm new as the fire at my feet
some nights i'm a star, glamorous, ancient

& already extinguished. we citizens
of an unpopular heaven

& low-attended crucifixions. listen
i've accepted what i was given

be it my name or be it my ender's verdict.
when i was born, i was born a bull's-eye.

i spent my life arguing how i mattered
until it didn't matter.

who knew my haven
would be my coffin?

dead is the safest i've ever been.
i've never been so alive.

* * *

if you press your ear to the dirt
you can hear it hum, not like it's filled

with beetles & other low gods
but like a tongue rot with gospel

& other glories. listen to the dirt
crescendo a kid back.

come. celebrate. this
is everyday. everyday

holy. everyday high
holiday. everyday new

year. every year, days get longer.
time clogged with boys. the boys

O the boys. they still come
in droves. the old world

keeps choking them. our new one
can't stop spitting them out.

* * *

i was raised with a healthy fear of the dark.
i turned the light bright, but you just kept

being born, kept coming for me, kept being
so dark, i got sca ... i was doing my job.

* * *

dear badge number

what did i do wrong?
be born? be black? meet you?

* * *

ask the mountainboy to put you on
his shoulders if you want to see

the old world, ask him for some lean
-in & you'll be home. step off him

& walk around your block.
grow wings & fly above your city.

all the guns fire toward heaven.
warning shots mince your feathers.

fall back to the metal-less side
of the mountainboy, cry if you need to.

that world of laws rendered us into dark
matter. we asked for nothing but our names

in a mouth we've known
for decades. some were blessed

to know the mouth.
our decades betrayed us.

* * *

there, i drowned, back before, once.
there, i knew how to swim, but couldn't.

there, men stood by shore & watched me blue.
there, i was a dead fish, the river's prince.

there, i had a face & then didn't.
there, my mother cried over me, open casket

but i wasn't there. i was here, by my own
water, singing a song i learned somewhere

south of somewhere worse.
now, everywhere i am is

the center of everything. i must
be the lord of something.

what was i before? a boy? a son?
a warning? a myth? i whistled

now i'm the god of whistling.
i built my Olympia downstream.

* * *

you are not welcome here. trust
the trip will kill you. go home.

we earned this paradise
by a death we didn't deserve.

i'm sure there are other heres.
a somewhere for every kind

of somebody, a heaven of brown
girls braiding on golden stoops

but here —
    how could i ever explain to you —

  someone prayed we'd rest in peace
  & here we are

  in peace whole all summer

* * *

dear white america

i've left Earth in search of darker planets, a solar system revolving too near a black hole. i've left in search of a new God. i do not trust the God you have given us. my grandmother's hallelujah is only outdone by the fear she nurses every time the bloodfat summer swallows another child who used to sing in the choir. take your God back. though his songs are beautiful, his miracles are inconsistent. i want the fate of Lazarus for Renisha, want Chucky, Bo, Meech, Trayvon, Sean & Jonylah risen three days after their entombing, their ghost re-gifted flesh & blood, their flesh & blood regifted their children. i've left Earth, i am equal parts sick of your go back to Africa & i just don't see race. neither did the poplar tree. we did not build your boats (though we did leave a trail of kin to guide us home). we did not build your prisons (though we did & we fill them too). we did not ask to be part of your America (though are we not America? her joints brittle & dragging a ripped gown through Oakland?). i can't stand your ground. i'm sick of calling your recklessness the law. each night, i count my brothers. & in the morning, when some do not survive to be counted, i count the holes they leave. i reach for black folks & touch only air. your master magic trick, America. now he's breathing, now he don't. abra-cadaver. white bread voodoo. sorcery you claim not to practice, hand my cousin a pistol to do your work. i tried, white people. i tried to love you, but you spent my brother's funeral making plans for brunch, talking too loud next to his bones. you took one look at the river, plump with the body of boy after girl after sweet boi & ask why does it always have to be about race? because you made it that way! because you put an asterisk on my sister's gorgeous face! call her pretty (for a black girl)! because black girls go missing without so much as a whisper of where?! because there are no amber alerts for amber-skinned girls! because Jordan boomed. because Emmett whistled. because Huey P. spoke. because Martin preached. because black boys can always be too loud to live. because it's taken my papa's & my grandma's time, my father's time, my mother's time, my aunt's time, my uncle's time, my brother's & my sister's time ... how much time do you want for your progress? i've left Earth to find a place where my kin can be safe, where black people ain't but people the same color as the good, wet earth, until that means something, until then i bid you well, i bid you war, i bid you our lives to gamble with no more. i've left Earth & i am touching everything you beg your telescopes to show you. i'm giving the stars their right names. & this life, this new story & history you cannot steal or sell or cast overboard or hang or beat or drown or own or redline or shackle or silence or cheat or choke or cover up or jail or shoot or jail or shoot or jail or shoot or ruin

this, if only this one, is ours.

dinosaurs in the hood

let's make a movie called Dinosaurs in the Hood.
Jurassic Park meets Friday meets The Pursuit of Happyness.
there should be a scene where a little black boy is playing
with a toy dinosaur on the bus, then looks out the window
& sees the T. rex, because there has to be a T. rex.

don't let Tarantino direct this. in his version, the boy plays
with a gun, the metaphor: black boys toy with their own lives
the foreshadow to his end, the spitting image of his father.
nah, the kid has a plastic brontosaurus or triceratops
& this is his proof of magic or God or Santa. i want a scene

where a cop car gets pooped on by a pterodactyl, a scene
where the corner store turns into a battleground. don't let
the Wayans brothers in this movie. i don't want any racist shit
about Asian people or overused Latino stereotypes.
this movie is about a neighborhood of royal folks —

children of slaves & immigrants & addicts & exile — saving their town
from real ass dinosaurs. i don't want some cheesy, yet progressive
Hmong sexy hot dude hero with a funny, yet strong, commanding
Black girl buddy-cop film. this is not a vehicle for Will Smith
& Sofia Vergara. i want grandmas on the front porch taking out raptors

with guns they hid in walls & under mattresses. i want those little spitty
screamy dinosaurs. i want Cecily Tyson to make a speech, maybe two.
i want Viola Davis to save the city in the last scene with a black fist afro pick
through the last dinosaur's long, cold-blood neck. But this can't be
a black movie. this can't be a black movie. this movie can't be dismissed

because of its cast or its audience. this movie can't be metaphor
for black people & extinction. This movie can't be about race.
this movie can't be about black pain or cause black pain.
this movie can't be about a long history of having a long history with hurt.
this movie can't be about race. nobody can say nigga in this movie

who can't say it to my face in public. no chicken jokes in this movie.
no bullet holes in the heroes. & no one kills the black boy. & no one kills
the black boy. & no one kills the black boy. besides, the only reason
i want to make this is for the first scene anyway: little black boy
on the bus with his toy dinosaur, his eyes wide & endless

his dreams possible, pulsing, & right there.


it won't be a bullet

becoming a little moon — brightwarm in me one night.
thank god. i can go quietly. the doctor will explain death
& i'll go practice.

in the catalogue of ways to kill a black boy, find me
buried between the pages stuck together
with red stick. ironic, predictable. look at me.

i'm not the kind of black man who dies on the news.
i'm the kind who grows thinner & thinner & thinner
until light outweighs us, & we become it, family
gathered around my barely body telling me to go
toward myself.