"A Refusal to Mourn the Deaths, by Gunfire, of Three Men in Brooklyn," John Murillo

“And at times, didn’t the whole country try to break his skin?” —Tim Seibles

You strike your one good match to watch its bloom and jook, a swan song just before a night wind comes to snuff it. That’s the kind of day it’s been. Your Black & Mild, now, useless as a prayer pressed between your lips. God damn the wind. And everything it brings. You hit the corner store to cop a light, and spy the trouble rising in the cashier’s eyes. TV reports some whack job shot two cops then popped himself, here, in the borough, just one mile away. You’ve heard this one before. In which there’s blood. In which a black man snaps. In which things burn. You buy your matches. Christ is watching from the wall art, swathed in fire.

“This country is mine as much as an orphan’s house is his.” —Terrance Hayes

To breathe it in, this boulevard perfume of beauty shops and roti shacks, to take in all its funk, calypso, reggaeton, and soul, to watch school kids and elders go about their days, their living, is, if not to fall in love, at least to wonder why some want us dead. Again this week, they killed another child who looked like me. A child we’ll march about, who’ll grace our placards, say, then be forgotten like a trampled pamphlet. What I want, I’m not supposed to. Payback. Woe and plenty trouble for the gunman’s clan. I’m not suppose to. But I want a brick, a window. One good match, to watch it bloom.

“America, I forgive you… I forgive you eating black children, I know your hunger.” --Bob Kaufman

You dream of stockpiles—bottles filled with gas and wicks stripped from a dead cop’s slacks—a row of paddy wagons parked, a pitcher’s arm. You dream of roses, time-lapse blossoms from the breasts of sheriffs, singing Calico and casings’ rain. You dream of scattered stars, dream panthers at the precinct, dream a black- out, planned and put to use. You dream your crew a getaway van, engine running. Or, no thought to run at all. You dream a flare sent up too late against the sky, the coup come hard and fast. You dream of pistol smoke and bacon, folded flags—and why feel shame? Is it the dream? Or that it’s only dream?

“& still when I sing this awful tale, there is more than a dead black man at the center.” —Reginald Dwayne Betts

You change the channel, and it’s him again. Or not him. Him, but younger. Him, but old. Or him with skullcap. Kufi. Hoodied down. It’s him at fifteen. Him at forty. Bald, or dreadlocked. Fat, or chiseled. Six foot three, or three foot six. Coal black or Ralph Bunche bright. Again, it’s him. Again, he reached. Today, behind his back, his waist, beneath the seat, his socks, to pull an Uzi, morning star, or Molotov. They said don’t move, they said get down, they said to walk back toward their car. He, so to speak, got down… Three to the head, six to the heart. A mother kneels and prays— Not peace, but pipe bombs, hands to light the fuse.

“Fuck the whole muthafucking thing.” —Etheridge Knight

A black man, dancing for the nightly news, grins wide and white, all thirty-two aglow and glad to be invited. Makes a show of laying out, of laundry airing. Throws the burden back on boys, their baggy wear and boisterous voices. Tells good folk at home how streets run bloody, riffraff take to crime like mice to mayhem, and how lawmen, more than ever, need us all to back them. Fuck this chump, the channel, and the check they cut to get him. Fuck the nodding blonde, the fat man hosting. Fuck the story. Fuck the quick acquittals. Fuck the crowds and camera van. You change the channel. Fuck, it’s him again.

“I enter this story by the same door each time.” --Julian Randall

At Normandy and Florence, brick in hand, one afternoon in ‘92, with half the city razed and turned against itself, a young boy beat a man to meat, and signed, thereby, the Ledger of the Damned. Big Book of Bad Decisions. Black Boy’s Almanac of Shit You Can’t Take Back. We watched, in shock. The fury, sure. But more so that it took this long to set it. All these matchstick years… He beat him with a brick, then danced a jig around his almost-carcass. Cameras caught him live and ran that loop for weeks, all night, all day, to prove us all, I think, one thug, one black beast prancing on the nightly news.

“And when it comes to those hard deeds done by righteous people and martyrs, isn’t it about time for that to be you?” --Gary Copeland Lilley

Not Huey on his high back wicker throne, beret cocked cooler than an Oaktown pimp. Or young Guevara marching into camp, all swagger, mane, and slung M-1. But one less suited, you could say, for picture books and posters, slouching on a northbound Bolt, caressing steel and posting plans to shoot. He means, for once, to be of use. Small axe to massive branches, tree where hangs the noose. He says he’s “putting wings on pigs today,” wants two for each of us they’ve blown away. Wants gun salutes and caskets. Dirges, tears, and wreaths. Wants widows on the witness stand, or near the riot’s flashpoint, brick in hand.

“I itch for my turn.” --Indigo Moor

Like Malcolm at the window, rifle raised and ready for whatever—classic black and white we pinned above our dorm room desks— we knew a storm brewed, spinning weathervanes and hustling flocks from sky to sky. We dozed, most nights, nose deep in paperback prognoses. Wretched and Black Skin, White Masks, our books of revelation. Clarions to would-be warriors, if only we might rise up from our armchairs, lecture halls, or blunt smoke cyphers. Talking all that gun and glory, not a Nat among us. Free to wax heroic. Deep. As bullet holes through Panther posters, Huey’s shattered throne.

“Poems are bullshit unless they are teeth…” —Amiri Baraka

It ain’t enough to rabble rouse. To run off at the mouth. To speechify and sing. Just ain’t enough to preach it, Poet, kin to kin, pulpit to choir, as if song were anything like Panther work. It ain’t. This morning when the poets took the park to poet at each other, rage and rant, the goon squad watched and smiled, watched us shake our fists and fret. No doubt amused. As when a mastiff meets a yapping lapdog, or the way a king might watch a circus clown produce a pistol from a passing car. Our wrath the flag that reads kaboom! Our art, a Malcolm poster rolled up, raised to swat.

“every once in a while i see the winged spirits of niggas past raise out the rubble” --Paul Beatty

Could be he meant to set the world right. One bullet at a time. One well-placed slug, one dancing shell case at a time. One hot projectile pushing through, one body bag zipped shut and shipped to cold store, at a time. Could be he meant to make us proud, to fill Nat Turner’s shoes. Could be he meant to aim at each acquittal, scot free cop, each trigger pull or chokehold left unchecked, and blast daylight straight through. Could be he meant, for once, to do. We chat. We chant. We theorize and write. We clasp our hands, spark frankincense, and pray. Our gods, though, have no ears. And yet, his gun sang loud. Enough to make them all lean in.

“Paradise is a world where everything is sanctuary & nothing is a gun.” --Danez Smith

A pipebomb hurled through a wig shop’s glass— nine melting mannequins, nine crowns of flame. Hair singe miasma, black smoke braided. Scream of squad cars blocks away. Burnt out Caprice and overturned Toyota. Strip mall stripped. And gutted. Gift shop, pet shop, liquor store, old stationery wholesale. Home décor, cheap dinnerware. An old man sprinting, draped in handbags, loaded down with wedding gowns. Three Bloods and two Crips tying, end-to-end, one red, one blue, bandana. Freebase fiend with grocery bags, new kicks, and name brand jeans. Spilled jug of milk against the curb, black cat bent low to lap it. This, your world, burnt bright.

“I love the world, but my heart’s been cheated.” --Cornelius Eady

He thought a prayer and a pistol grip enough to get it done. Enough to get him free. Get free or, dying, try. To stop the bleeding. Blood on leaves, blood at the root. I didn’t root, exactly, when I heard word spread. Word that he crept up, panther like, and let loose lead. A lot. Before he fled the spot, then somewhere underground, let kick his cannon one last time. “One Time,” our name for cops back at the crib. It had to do, I think, with chance. Or lack of. Chickens come to roost? Perhaps. I didn’t root. Per se. But almost cracked a smile that day. The news like wind chimes on the breeze. Or shattered glass.

“We beg your pardon, America. We beg your pardon, once again.” --Gil Scott-Heron

To preach forgiveness in a burning church. To nevermind the noose. To nurse one cheek then turn the next. To run and fetch the switch. To switch up, weary of it all. Then cock the hammer back and let it fall… But they were men, you say, with children. And so close to Christmas. But their wives, you say. Today so close to Christmas… Memory as noose, and history as burning church, who’d come across the two cops parked and not think, Go time? One time for Tamir time? Not think Fire this time? To say as much is savage. Blame the times, and what they’ve made of us. We know now, which, and where—the pistol or the prayer.

“…like sparklers tracing an old alphabet in the night sky” --Amaud Jamaul Johnson

It’s natural, no, to put your faith in fire? The way it makes new all it touches. How a city, let’s say, might become, by way of time and riot, pure. In ’92, we thought to gather ashes where before loomed all that meant to kill us. Rubble now and lovely. Worked into, as if from clay, some sort of monument. To what? No clue. Scorched earth, and then…? Suppose a man sets out, with gun and half a plan, to be of use. To hunt police. Insane, we’d say. Not long for life. In this, we’d miss the point. A lit match put to gas-soaked rag, the bottle flung, may die, but dying, leaves a burning house.

“Afro angels, black saints, balanced upon the switchblades of that air and sang.” --Robert Hayden

But that was when you still believed in fire, the gospel of the purge, the burning house. You used to think a rifle and a prayer, a pipebomb hurled through a shopkeep’s glass, enough, at last, to set the world right. Enough, at least, to galvanize some kin. Think Malcolm at the window, set to shoot, or Huey on his high-back wicker throne. Think Normandy and Florence, brick in hand, a Black man dancing for the camera crews. You change the channel, there he is again, and begging: Find some bottles, fill with gas. Begs breathe in deep the Molotov’s perfume. Says strike your one good match, then watch it bloom.

Come, look at him, at all his goods, how his whole body becomes song, an aria of light, a psalm's kaleidoscope.

—  Amaud Jamaul Johnson, from “Burlesque,” Red Summer

I moved through the world as if I were floating. All I remember was holding my breath. I couldn't see how to slow down the avalanche of pain shaping that world. The world burning seemed an outward expression of my inner life, how I was sandwiched between a never-ending flood and the fires forever approaching.

Amaud Jamaul Johnson, Felling Light

Smokey | Amaud Jamaul Johnson

the most dangerous men in my neighborhood only listened to love songs

to reach those notes a musicologist told me a man essentially cuts

his own throat. some nights even now, i’ll hear a falsetto and think i should run

via @jj_rancourt

Smokey by Amaud Jamaul Johnson

the most dangerous men in my neighborhood only listened to love songs to reach those notes a musicologist told me a man essentially cuts his own throat. some nights even now, i’ll hear a falsetto and think i should run

I, J, and K?

I: Do you have a favorite poet?

I have so many favorite poets! I was going to restrain myself, but you know what? I’m not going to! Have a bunch of links! 

Erin Belieu’s “When at a Certain Party in NYC” is probably my favorite poem, and yes, I realize I say that about everything but this time I mean it. It is also (for the observant) where the title for Losers comes from. 

I really love Susan Briante’s The Market Wonders! It’s about class and economics and politics and does really wonderful things with the style. 

I liked specific poems out of Ocean Vuong’s Night Sky with Exit Wounds more than I thought the book worked as a whole, but! (Also, that poem I linked has the same name as a fiction book he wrote and I Don’t Like That. I have my favorite poem of his on my phone, since the internet version is different than the one in the book.) 

Shoutout to Reginald Dwayne Betts, Amaud Jamaul Johnson, and Cody Smith whose poetry I like but haven’t read any books / chapbooks by. I’m also really into WWI poetry (requisite link to Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est”) and Old English poetry? I just. I like so many things, you guys. 

And finally, here’s BLAST (from the short-lived Vorticism movement before WWI basically killed everyone involved) because I think tumblr would appreciate the manifesto. May some vulgarly inventive, but useful person, arise, and restore to us the necessary BLIZZARDS. 

J: Favorite woman writer?

Probably Margaret Atwood? I feel like I’m forgetting someone desperately important to me, but I can’t remember who. My favorite female writer might actually write fic, come to think of it. 

K: Favorite male writer?

Definitely Terry Pratchett, my all-time favorite anything. I’m constantly walking around going, “HELLO, HAVE YOU READ DISCWORLD?” and smooshing books in people’s faces. (I always recommend starting with Going Postal, because that’s what I started with and it’s one of my favorites, OR Monstrous Regiment, OR the City Watch series, OR—)

Link to meme!

THERE'S A REVOLUTION OUTSIDE, MY LOVE

Pulitzer Prize winner Smith, former poet laureate of the U.S., and Freeman, an executive editor at Knopf, gather poems, letters, and essays, most previously published in Literary Hub, bearing witness to systemic oppression and racial injustice. Angry, rueful, and defiant, the impressive roster of award-winning writers and academics portrays a nation wracked by pain. “There’s a revolution outside, my love,” journalist and cultural critic Kirsten West Savali writes in a moving letter to her son. “Where in the world is safe for you, my beautiful, beautiful boy?” Jasmon Drain, addressing his daughter, reflects that during the pandemic, she must wear two masks: one, her skin color; the other, protection against the virus. “Your born mask brought fear. This new one redoubles it,” he writes. “There’s no vaccine for who you’ll be or how you’ll be viewed, for the unseen or visible parts that will ofttimes be assumed of you.” Protests against police brutality inspired many pieces: “Like an arrow,” writes Native American writer Layli Long Soldier, “the images of George Floyd pierced my soul.” Living in Madison, Wisconsin, where he teaches creative writing, poet Amaud Jamaul Johnson describes “the Fault Lines of Midwestern Racism”: insidious expressions of prejudice among Whites who treat him like “a kind of mascot, a pet Negro, that one Black body in the coffee shop or at the private pool; I’ve become everyone’s one Black friend.” Francisco Goldman compares racist dictators to Trump: “The aftereffects of an evil dictatorship are hard to get rid of, to scrub clean. It usually involves a steadfast struggle, and justice is the only remedy.” In “A Letter to Black America,” Smith invokes Black solidarity, exhorting her readers to “revel in the depth and the flair and the belief and the secrecy of Blackness. We are lucky to be who we are, and we know it.” Other contributors include Edwidge Danticat, Gregory Pardlo, Ross Gay, and Camille T. Dungy.

from Kirkus Reviews https://ift.tt/3fav50p

"Poem: Smokey" by BY AMAUD JAMAUL JOHNSON AND REGINALD DWAYNE BETTS via NYT Magazine https://ift.tt/3tPWQC0

Can't you just shake loose that goddamn stone; Can't you get yourself, soft for me, Baby, for just a little while. Then so loud repeatedly, the way she keeps saying nothing.

from This Bitter Earth by Amaud Jamaul Johnson

With powerful new books, married @UWMadison poets Cherene Sherrard and @AmaudJamaul

Johnson explore the realities of Black lives.

@UWMadisonLS @EnglishUW @UPittPress @pittpoetry @AutumnHousePrs @tupelopress @FLPress

https://onwisconsin.uwalumni.com/features/poetry-of-the-moment/

Big City | Armaud Jamaul Johnson

He promises a canary dress, white gloves, says they’ll eat chops, thick as her thighs, that they’ll order doubles of the “finest,” see all the Big Names when they arrive. But it’s the thought of them dead: half of what they own draped around them, her head against his chest, his back slack against the headboard, all their letters unopened, bills not paid, long knocks, the notices tacked outside their door. It’s not knowing whether some smell would introduce them to their neighbors or a landlord wheeling them out into the hallway; the highboy he chipped on the drive up, the silver she inherited from her mother, her hatboxes, stacked high next to them like a wedding cake waiting to be buried. He heard that “up there” the wind had talons sharp enough to hook a grown man beneath his collarbone and carry him a full city block. He heard that you learned the months by measuring the length of their shadows and even summer was like a quality of night.

Amaud Jamaul Johnson, “Big City” from Red Summer, Tupelo Press, 2006 Source: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/237656

Burlesque

Watch the fire undress him, how flame fingers each button, rolls back his collar, unzips him without sweet talk or mystery.

See how the skin begins to gather at his ankles, how it slips into the embers, how it shimmers beneath him, unshapen, iridescent

as candlelight on a dark negligee. Come, look at him, at all his goods, how his whole body becomes song, an aria of light, a psalm’s kaleidoscope.

Listen as he lets loose an opus, night’s national anthem, the tune you can’t name, but can’t stop humming. There, he burns brilliant as a blue note.

Amaud JamaulJohnson

What did I know, what did I know Of gazing silences and terrored stone Brilliances; beauty of what’s hardbitten The auroral darkness which is God Then you arrived, meditative, ironic My head gripped in bony vice Mouth of agony shaping a cry it cannot utter What did I know, what did I know Of a changing permanence The stains and dirty tools of struggle Weaving a wish and a weariness together Years before your time. Years and years I gaze through layered light Within the rock of the undiscovered suns I see, I walk with you among The landscape lush, metallic, flayed Behind us, beyond us now The very sunlight here seems flammable

Amaud Jamaul Johnson, “Hayden”