Visiting an Old Friend
for KB
I arrive at
the spot where they found you
dead,
sprawled out on the floor, head in a pool
of blood, a
lit joint just beyond your reach.
I pluck the
bullet from your brain
use my own
bone and skin
to seal the hole
where it entered.
I close the
door knowing
the
assassin’s return is inevitable
and begin the
impossible task.
I warn you
that the guy who called
claiming he
has your money is setting you up.
Murder is the
way he will clear his debt.
The January
moon has the audacity to shine
silver rays on
the crimson stains
I try to wipe
off the floor.
With your
blood on my hands I keep
apologizing
for not staying in touch
over the
expanse of cities and seasons
which is why
thirteen years after the fact
I find myself
in a fold in time,
in a fatal
room, on an East St. Louis night.
I tell you
the son you always wanted
was born
eight months, two weeks
and three
days after your death. I don’t
mention the
fact that the police will never
conduct an
investigation, the assailant
will not be
apprehended, that our cries
for justice will
not be heard. With the sound
of footsteps approaching
I rush to tell you
about Dione.
How her love was the arm
that pulled
me from the ledge… that I’m back
in school…
that I’m still writing… that Ron
is doing a
15-year bid in Leavenworth…
that Bobby is still getting on everybody’s
nerves.
Our
miraculous laughter is as deep and wide
as the winter
night. Then comes the knock.
When you
rise. I hug you longer than you
feel
comfortable with and beg you
not to answer
the door.
______
The Art of Choking
I
chew and swallow so fast
I
believe choking will be
my
cause of death. Just last year,
a
Dorito forced its way down
the
wrong pipe, its three sharp
corners,
with surgical precision,
filling
my throat with nacho cheese
and
blood. I will never forget
the
night at Jimmy D’s a jumbo-sized
rib
tip was so stubbornly wedged
in
my throat I couldn’t catch
my
breath for three whole minutes.
I
lunged and bucked, eyes wide
as
saucers, searching for help.
No
one attempted the Heimlich.
Although
the glut of meat made it
through
my esophagus, it remained
lodged
in my chest for two days.
But
nothing compares to the time
last
semester, when Sterling,
this
white guy I had in a poetry
workshop,
this guy who said
things
like “With the inherent
disparity
that exists in the
unemployment
rate it’s easy to
understand
why black people don’t tip.”
This
guy that I vowed to challenge
the
next time he said anything
even
remotely offensive, used the word
“nigger”
twice in one sentence
during
a class discussion of the poem
“Incident”
by Countee Cullen.
Although
it came in the guise
of
intellectual interrogation,
his
utterance tore through me
like
barbed wire through the neck
of
a fourteen year old boy. But my
indignant
response never made it
out
of my throat. It just got stuck there
like a mis-swallowed Dorito,
or a jumbo-sized rib tip.
______
|