Owed

by Joshua Bennett

  Another approach to the general

  sentiment that Blackness

  is beautiful, with no referent

  to their everyday negation

  of our essential, human splendor.

  An apology on the Senate

  floor. For the trade, the plunder

  of our names, unremarked

  graves, a hand in the hair,

  a boot to the throat, guns

  in the schools & the guns

  are the books, the stares

  of the second-grade teacher

  calling your son a distraction,

  your daughter’s braids illegal,

  your building a blight

  on the neighborhood,

  the good you do & dream

  of never quite good

  enough to merit

  the bull’s-eye’s removal.

  A ship to wherever

  we point on a map

  of the measurable

  universe, dare call

  harbor, sanctum, ground

  where the children can play

  & come home whole.

  REPARATION

  They tell you the tumor, at present,

  is roughly four inches wide.

  A manageable distance. One that you scale

  with your hands, for some reason,

  on the long ride back to Boston,

  rather counterintuitively, as you were

  trying to use them

  to write something meaningful

  about all this pain

  the miniature killer inside

  your father carved into you.

  The gesture teaches you

  absolutely nothing

  about the space

  between his inconstant body

  & the dark man you chase

  in all of your thinking.

  He is hundreds of miles

  away right now, probably,

  sitting in a chair, staring

  at the wall like a former assailant.

  He is sending you text messages

  with critical pieces of language

  missing.

  You grasp at the shards,

  stupidly.

  Little builder. Little mirror. Little body

  -guard, throwing punches

  at the flood.

  REPARATION

  How are you feeling? is always your opening question

  & you know me. I invariably take it the wrong way

  when you say it like that.

  I hear you asking for damage reports, the autobiography

  of this pile of brown rubble bumbling on

  about his father’s beauty, this chasm splitting

  the voice in his unkempt head & the one

  which enters the realm of the living.

  You are good to me, & this kindness, I think, is not reducible

  to our plainly economic relation, the yellow carbon

  receipt at the end of each session a reminder

  that we aren’t just girls

  in the park catching up, estimating the cost

  of our high school errors.

  I never call you my analyst, because

  that makes me sound like a body

  of work, some extended meditation

  approaching theory, if only asymptotically.

  Anyways. I’m all right today. I remembered

  to eat breakfast, & went for a run uptown.

  I gave myself credit for trying to change.

  Something in me awakened, today,

  ready for liftoff. It sang.

  REPARATION

  So much has been said

  about black men

  & their mothers,

  almost none of which

  works for you & me

  because I am less

  your acolyte, or boyfriend,

  than I am your twin brother

  of a sort, counterfeit currency

  moving through the world

  on your behalf, making things

  move. We duel

  because you created me,

  & sometimes cannot

  bear the trace of yourself

  I belt out

  by being here.

  Laughing with all

  my teeth. Debating

  minutiae. Stealing your high

  -heeled purple pumps, the ones

  you once kept next to your dresser

  drawer, putting them on,

  sauntering across the house

  like a soloist. I was four.

  You were furious. You

  forgave me.

  Forgive me. I fear

  sometimes I am four men

  at once, each one

  bludgeoning the other

  based on some long-held

  misunderstanding.

  You urge me

  to take better care

  of this wilting

  frame. Drink

  water. Pop a pair

  of echinacea capsules

  each day. Devote

  my thought life (your phrase)

  to higher planes.

  But what modern-day

  black son wasn’t born

  knowing how to pray?

  Doesn’t meditate

  on the gun, the badge,

  a lover’s hand

  against the face or neck

  to jog his memory,

  recall his preordained

  place? Encaged, prostrate,

  enraged, enamored, no space

  to make the world

  you saw in visions

  & scriptures, no,

  this isn’t the future

  you dreamt of, Ma,

  but it is the war

  for which

  you gave me vestments,

  the day I stepped

  onto your front porch,

  bloodstained & half-asleep.

  You bade me return

  to the street. Face the boys’

  onslaught head-on, remind them

  whose I was, the name I carry,

  the true & living god giving it form.

  I was born

  with a job.

  I will die

  with one. We live

  in a country

  with no language

  for what you are,

  & I persist

  for the sake

  of your glory.

  III

  TOKEN COMES CLEAN

  What I desired most was approachlessness,

  enough fear to mark a sharp & ardent

  wall between me & the broader social

  sphere, think: semi-invisible

  force field, think: aura light

  umber like Bruce Leroy.

  A beauty one might use to keep

  a state-sanctioned grave

  at bay, the distance

  this darker body ought

  to buy but doesn’t.

  If evolution were kind,

  we would all be fireproof

  by now. A shame, to be sure: this

  brutal truth boomeranging back

  & forth across America’s oeuvre,

  History stammering with blood

  in its throat, blood on the books, blood

  on the leaves, & what can you right

  -fully call living now that the dead

 
have learned to dance so well?

  Knife wounds in the global sky,

  White god on my childhood mind

  & you want to talk about repair

  FREDERICK DOUGLASS IS DEAD

  & might very well remain that way,

  despite the best attempts

  of our present overlord to resurrect

  him without a single living

  black mother’s permission.

  If he should come, & be recognized

  as anything other than the muted whisper

  of a body interred, I wish his return

  as some strange & ungovernable terror,

  a ghost story turned live & direct ectoplasm

  without warning: Frederick in the White

  House kitchens, Frederick in the faucets,

  Frederick posted up at every corner

  of the Oval Office, shredding documents

  invisibly, a blade in each of his eighteen

  laser hands. Go off, his more radical undead

  colleagues will exclaim. You better tell that man

  to keep your name out his mouth. But Frederick

  Douglass doesn’t say a thing. Not yet.

  He’s waiting for you & me, my grandmother

  says. Frederick Douglass is irrevocably dead,

  & refuses to ride until we are ready. Until

  our prayers are knives or sheets of flame:

  Hear us, O Beloved, Fugitive Saint: Defer

  the rain. Grant us the strength of a rage

  we can barely fathom. Make us

  brave as the flock in the fist

  of a storm. Unmoor every melody

  they built from our screams. Steady

  our dreams. Keep us warm.

  OWED TO LONG JOHNS

  I remember thinking these are like skin for my skin

  & a truer thing to call black to boot

  as my first pair were blacker even

  than my nascent curls, which turned

  brown whenever they would wrestle

  the light. My father called you thermals,

  which always brought to mind

  radioactive weapons of one kind

  or another, two nuclear physicists

  using casual shorthand over coffee.

  For ten years, under thrift store denim

  & corduroys rubbed raw

  by Ms. Blint’s blue carpet,

  I rock your soft scales

  with minimal fuss, only twice or so

  grumbling to Pop about how

  you make me appear,

  if not heavier per se then just,

  well, stuck in all of my clothes, that this

  is on the whole untenable

  for a boy my age, no small

  tragedy given these were formative

  years, you see, critical even

  as it pertained to the glowing,

  affirmative sense of my body

  I would need for success

  in the general public

  situation. Pop’s concern

  remained with the cold,

  & I remained a boy

  cocooned, fed up, hungry

  for better methods of breaking

  winter’s callous rule. Anything

  other than having to leave

  the oven door open, setting

  my mother’s best four black pots

  to boil at once, our entire family

  gathered as if shrapnel in the living

  room, so close our bodies grew almost

  indeterminate there, huddled like stars

  under blankets to thaw

  OWED TO YOUR FATHER’S GOLD CHAIN

  Since we are already on the topic,

  I casually mention that I think we should

  name the baby Ajax & you laugh

  so hard that both your shoulders shake

  as you mouth an adamant no,

  your arms waving wild in front

  of your face like some novice

  air traffic controller. You later explain

  that this is not only quote unquote

  a terrible name but also that it makes

  you think of innumerable Thursdays

  spent cleaning bathrooms at your grandma’s

  house. And yes, I know, there must be a joke

  about class stratification in there somewhere,

  since the name Ajax also makes me think

  of that magical white dust in the cardboard

  blue box long before it does any ancient

  Greek demigod, but I tend to assume

  my first thought is not my best thought,

  as you now know well. I often attribute

  this fact to my sound colonial education,

  but am not yet sure what you would call

  or think of it. One might say that this,

  in fact, is a working definition for love

  in a time of general disenchantment. The meticulous

  consideration of all that slipped through

  the mind’s wet meshwork before, minor

  miracles, like the number of bones in a human

  hand. How yours unfastens like a memory

  when I request an impromptu waltz

  across the bar’s threshold & we circle

  one another, as if swordsmen, in the low light.

  How the next week, you clasp your father’s gold

  chain at the back of my neck, call me beautiful

  in your inside voice, barely breaking a whisper,

  as if you can’t hear the dawn roaring

  its way through the bedroom window

  just to catch a glimpse of us here,

  barely mortal, shimmering at the cusp

  of this strange & untamable world.

  SUMMER JOB

  For all we knew, there was no such thing as wealth

  management internships sponsored by a father’s

  Harvard roommate, or else some Fifth Avenue gig

  running iced coffee for fashionistas an hour’s ride away

  from where we stood, the darkest thing for miles,

  trash collection claws extending from our sleeves

  like some late eighties cyborg fantasy. We were bored

  out of our brains, unlettered, sharp enough still

  to know our place in the grander proletarian scheme:

  a pair of scholarship kids paid to maintain campus

  while our peers tried their hands at college physics,

  American industry, psychedelics and road trips

  to the Midwest with friends, all while Devin and I

  stood in our standard-issue jumpsuits, adding another

  coat of white paint to cafeteria walls without irony.

  There were no small iron gods in our pockets then;

  no machines to thread us into the invisible world, and so

  we passed entire mornings listening to the ceremonies

  of birds we couldn’t name as we traversed the sides

  of the highway, each step perfecting our soon-to-be

  -flawless technique, dodging carrion, dividing paper waste

  from condoms and bottles of Coors, just the way Jay taught

  us our first day on call. I spent most breaks in the rift

  between observation and dreams, pulling music from the filthy

  tales each older man on the maintenance crew cast like a cure

  into the mind of the other. Folklore filling the desolate

  lecture halls where
we took lunch, laughing as we traded

  one tradition for another. No future worth claiming apart

  from that broken boiler in the next building, blackbirds

  trapped in the gutter-way, getting pipes fixed before fall.

  ELEGY FOR THE MODERN SCHOOL

  This much I can prove:

  we were black & unfinished

  in the Harlem of old,

  a mass of naps

  & Vaselined knees

  before the promise

  of faster Wi-Fi & craft

  beer was code for

  what it is code for.

  & my mother would

  drop us off in her ’89

  Toyota Camry, its cool

  steel flesh the color of a

  half-dead rhododendron.

  & my big sister would hold on

  to my left hand—which fit

  in hers like a quarter’s worth

  of Peanut Chews back then

  —until the bell bid us scatter.

  I was a good boy, & thus

  defined by a certain lust

  for solitude, the countless

  ways I learned to scream

  don’t touch. This was all I knew

  of the world I had yet to name,

  its utter indifference, its

  physical laws, my sister

  a kind of atmosphere,

  more god or feeling

  than another small,

  finite body like mine

  that could be known

  well, or else unmade.

  Miss Cherry owned a ruler

  long as my daddy’s

  entire forearm,

  called it Redeemer, kept

  the instrument at the front

  of our classroom

  so as to enrich

  our already budding

  sense of the apocalyptic,

  would rap our knuckles

  & backsides with it

  like a blacksmith in love

  with his labor any time

  we dared behave as if

  we were, in her words,

  outside our natural

  minds. Our parents

  thought this little more

  than rational extension

  of the age-old wisdom

  when it comes to rearing

  the hunted: I cannot keep you

  alive, but will see you die

  at my hands long before

  the day I let the law erase

  your name from the ledger

  of the living. & so it was,

  that in songs & parables