![]() "When Michel'le did the splits after just one wine cooler"A Poem by h d e rushinit doesn't matter now, the record. James Brown, I think, or Rick James before he started 'using'. Like it really doesn't matter the direction the wind comes in a tornado in Tennessee. Or that mice could probably be tolerated if they didn't run. i was grown, sitting down staring at chitlin's being devoured by a man whose leg had been cut off at the knee. "It's my 'sugar' and not yours', he would say. We nodded. My mother was a cub scout leader. Wore a beige skirt and a blue, fitted blouse with multi patches and buttons to signify that she held, at one time, this great power. And that her valor and heroism, in the face of great obstacles, had to be admired. Dad would always smack her on her fanny when she strode by which made her frown. You know that frown you make when you want to be loved hard so bad that your voice changes pitch and you halfheartedly slap at the ghost's hand as if slapping at it might make him cry out? To survive as humans we have to be insufferable savages. Narrating out from beneath the cover of our Negro-ness the meridian, that time after sundown when it's actually ok to hike up your beige skirt and put on some blues. Pretend this slang with me: from nomad to hangman, from loop to anything non-refrigerated; when the red moon signals the time to be touched, you go limp. Where my room was, which wasn't really a room but a hallway before the giant wooden door painted red that you had to push hard to close and hurt your thump to twist the dead-bolt-lock, is a lesson, I guess. That touching is somehow believing. That to survive one has to lock your comfort down beneath the giants feet. Because there is no nonuple; no more nine of anything when one analogy is enough.
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Added on June 20, 2024Last Updated on June 20, 2024 Author
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