Shut Up and Paint

directed by Titus Kaphar and Alex Mallis, 2022

Reginald Dwayne Betts, from Felon; “Night”

[Text ID: Listen, who hasn't waited for something / to happen? I know folks died waiting. I know / hurt is a wandering song. / I was lost in my fear.]

Reginald Dwayne Betts, from Felon: Poems; “A man drops a coat on the sidewalk and almost falls into the arms of another”

[Text ID: “One almost caresses the face of the other. / Lovers are never this gentle, are never this”]

Things always return to a man & his desire to be touched, & touch, That want to be known, governs us all.

— Reginald Dwayne Betts, “City of the Moon”

And everything depends upon how near you sleep to me. Just take this longing from my tongue, all the lonely things my hands have done.

— Leonard Cohen, “Take This Longing”

don’t you know they bury men like me alive with all of our sentimental longing.

— Hanif Abdurraqib, “It’s Not Like Nikola Tesla Knew All of Those People Were Going to Die”

Felon, Reginald Dwayne Betts

white peonies by Reginald Dwayne Betts

& they rename you kite, as if a word can make wings.

Reginald Dwayne Betts, “Ode to a Kite” from Shahid Reads His Own Palm

A poem by Reginald Dwayne Betts

Elegy Ending With a Cell Door Closing

    — for Rojai Fentress

& the Judge told him to count The trees in the parking lot Where there were only cars: Zero The same number of stars You could see on a night in the city. & the Judge told him the parking lot will Be crowded with trees, oaks & spruces & pines & willows & grass & maybe Horses before he smells the city On a Sunday afternoon; & another Word for this story is azalea, the purple Bouquet his mother might have buried Her face against, had she known for this Judge sentencing Fats was a Funeral — A mourning, another purplish bruise; Fats Pled not guilty, which is to say, he has never Murdered a man, & in the courtroom, he Washed his hands against the air, as if To say fuck everything; imagine, no hair Troubled his face that afternoon & He'd never held a razor, except Inside his mouth, the best weapon a man Could hope for, unless you were The cat I saw tussle, for a second, With a Louisville slugger, turning The razor under that man’s tongue Into a kind of prayer, his hands leaping To his face & blood appearing as if Always there, & the man’s hands Fumbling against the air, as if ablution Could be found drenched in blood, & remembering reminds me that Fat’s Washing was a kind of holy, a plea, A reaching, for trees, for wild horses, For all the violence he’s known, to make Of him free, when innocence failed.

Reginald Dwayne Betts

Hear Reginald Dwayne Betts read “Elegy Ending with a Cell Door Closing” (illustrated by Louisa Bertman)

Reginald Dwayne Betts writes about the background to the poem and the wider legal ramifications of juvenile crime and sentencing in an essay in the Yale Law Journal.

Image: Louisa Bertman

Blood History  // Reginald Dwayne Betts

The things that abandon you get remembered different. As precise as the English language can be, with words like penultimate and perseverate, there is not a combination of sounds that describe only that leaving. Once, drinking & smoking with buddies, a friend asked if I’d longed for a father. Had he said wanted, I would have dismissed him in the way that youngins dismiss it all: a shrug, sarcasm, a jab to the stomach, laughter. But he said longing. & in a different place, I might have wept. Said, once, my father lived with us & then he didn’t & it fucked me up so much I never thought about his leaving until I held my own son in my arms & only now speak on it. A man who drank Boone’s Farm & Mad Dog like water once told me & some friends that there is no word for father where he comes from, not like we know it. There, the word father is the same as the word for listen. The blunts we passed around let us forget our tongues. Not that much though. But what if the old head knew something? & if you have no father, you can’t hear straight. Years later, another friend wondered why I named my son after my father. You know, that’s a thing turn your life to a prayer that no dead man gonna answer.

it’s a wonder how something that can have you hold another so gently could be the ruin of all you might touch.

Felon by Reginald Dwayne Betts

Felon: Poems

​By Reginald Dwayne Betts.

Design by Sarahmay Wilkinson.

i’ve gotta stop listening to poetry podcasts at work bc i literally cry at every poem i hear

Reginald Dwayne Betts, from Felon; Poems; "Ballad of the Groundhog"

Reginald Dwayne Betts, from Felon: Poems; “A man drops a coat on the sidewalk and almost falls into the arms of another”

[Text ID: “it’s a wonder / how something that can have you hold another so / gently could be the ruin of all you might touch.”]

Reginald Dwayne Betts, “White Peonies” [ID in ALT]

Felon, Reginald Dwayne Betts