Douglas Manuel

When the junkies my father sold crack to got too close to me, he told them to back up six dicks’ lengths. This is the man who when I was seven caught me under the bed crying and said: Save those tears. You’ll need them later. The man who told me he smoked crack because he liked it, the man sitting on his couch now watching the History Channel, scratching the nub beneath his knee where his leg used to be, gumming plums, his false teeth soaking in vinegar on the table. I’m sitting across the room trying to conjure each version he’s shown of himself, trying to lie in water warm enough to soak away the switch he hit me with. To help me summon love for the man who just asked me if he can borrow 200 dollars, the man who once told me:Wish in one hand, then shit in the other, and see which one fills up the quickest.

I swear on the melody of trumpet vines, ants feasting through animal crackers, Burt’s Bees, Tyler Perry movies, my daddy’s .38 slug, footie-socks inside high-top Jordans, disidentification, drag queens, blond dreadlocks, headstones salt-and-peppering the grass, vanilla wafers in banana pudding, Zeus-swan chasing, blunt-guts, sharp thumbnails, keloid scars, cash-only bars, R&B songs, on what the pot called the kettle. I put that on my mama’s good hair, on playing solitaire with a phantom limb, the white woman I go home to, my auntie’s face when she says:You know he always loved them pink toes. I put that on everything, on the signifiers I gobble up, candlesticks blown out by whistling lips. I put that on dervishing records scratched on down-beats, empty beehives, fresh-fade head-slaps, hand claps, bamboo shoots, liminality, mestizos, the purple-black crook of my arm, split sternums, on You can’t save him now. I put that on skinny jeans, get rich quick schemes—Gotta get that C.R.E.A.M. Know what I mean?—freckled black faces, leafless trees throwing up gang signs, phlegm hocked onto streets. I swear I catch more stones than catfish. I lose more collard greens than sleep. I think nothing is here but us darkies, high yellows, red bones, cocoa butters. Someone, no, everyone has jungle fever. Don’t touch my forehead. Blond as moonshine, mute trombone choking. I put that on Instagram. Post me to the endless chain of signifiers. Strawberry gashes on kneecaps,Let me get some dap, Newports, Kool’s, and folding chairs instead of barstools, that white drool caked on your face.Mommy please wipe away the veil. I thought I was passing into the eye of the streetlamp. I swear. I promise on frondless palm trees, long pinkie nails, sixteen years, serve eight, and Miss Addie’s red beans and rice, Ol’ Dirty Bastard and the brother on the Cream of Wheat box.It don’t mean a thing if it don’t buckle your knees. Open your hands. I’ll give you a song, give you the Holy Ghost from a preacher’s greasy palm—When he hit me, I didn’t fall, felt eyes jabbing me, tagging me.Oh no he didn’t!— give you the om from the small of her back. I put that on double consciousness, multiple jeopardy, and performativity.Please make sure my fetters and manacles are tight. Yea baby, I like bottomless bullet chambers. I swear on the creation of Uncle Tom— some white woman's gospel.She got blue eyes? I love me some—on Josiah Henson, the real Uncle Tom, on us still believing in Uncle Tom. Lord, have mercy! Put that on the black man standing on my shoulders holding his balls. Put that on the black man I am—I am not—on the black man I wish I was.

You better rap, my brother says—he can b-box his ass off. Got DJ scratches and spins, will drop it on the two and four, the three and four. Whatever you need. Me posing my bars:My flows are second to none, come here, son. See how it’s done. Wanted to be a rapper? Check. Thought I was going to the NBA? Check. Father went to prison? Check. Brother too? Check. Mother died when I was eight? Check. Hung pictures of Luke Perry on my bedroom wall? What? Yep, give me a bit, and I’ll sprinkle some subjectivity on it. I loved that dude, his whisper-voice, his lean. Auntie worried on the phone: Girl, he got photos of some white boy all over his walls. Me rocking out to Tom Petty’s “You Don’t Know How It Feels.” Silent head nods do more than throw shade. All black people are fluent in silence. Mangled Baldwin quote? Let’s keep wrenching. Everybody’s fluent in silence. You know what a switchblade glare means. No need to read the look she gave me as I sang,Let me run with you tonight.

We shouldn’t raise mixed babies in the South, Kay says as I drive up the crest of another hill on our way into Kentucky. The South, where humidity leaves a sweat mustache, where a truck with a Confederate flag painted on the back windshield skitters in front of us. In its bed, avoiding our eyes, a boy with blond hair split down the middle like a Bible left open to the Book of Psalms. His shirtless, sun-licked skin drapes, a thin coat for his bones, his clavicles sharp. I want to know who’s driving this raggedy truck. I want the boy to look at us. I want to spray paint a black fist over that flag. I want the truck to find its way into the ravine. I want to— Stepping on the gas, I pass the truck, Kay and I turn our heads. The boy smiles and waves. The man driving doesn’t turn his head, keeps his eyes on the road. Kay turns red as she draws her fingers into fists. I stare at the whites of her eyes.