Kevin Young

To watch you walk cross the room in your black corduroys is to see civilization start— the wish- whish-whisk of your strut is flint striking rock—the spark of a length of cord rubbed till smoke starts—you stir me like coal and for days smoulder. I am no more a Boy Scout and, besides, could never put you out—you keep me on all day like an iron, out of habit— you threaten, brick- house, to burn all this down. You leave me only a chimney.

for my mother the living 1. After Independence Day all our toys began to tear up, school growing sweet on our tongues. We had already cut & hoed the cotton into rows, weeds piled useless as Confederate bills. September meant picking & half-days at Springfield, us colored grades let off at noon to pick the valuable white till nightfall. My hands, civil & slow, didn’t even deserve my behind on the picking truck, but Unc Chock ran the thing & Mama would’ve killed him dead if he’d dreamt of trying to get salty. The money was bad like all money then, not near as green or wide. Three dollars for a hundred pounds, better part of a day. I barely kept up, hands swole up like unpicked fruit. No matter when she started, Frankie plucked fifteen pounds more, food for two, a new Easter dress. Summers I turned so black & bent, all because I’d rather pick with friends than sling weeds alone, than stuff my mattress green. 2. Winters, when the white king had gone, we slept like fish, still moving. We walked back home for lunch & retraced after school, changing into our other pair of drawers before we chored the stove’s ash. No one got gas till after the War. Each November brought a boxcar from the Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe; for a share, Lopez balanced it home on his flatbed, a whale from the hunt. Once full of hobos, that bell we burnt kept us from freezing all season long. Before tossing each board in, I would run my hands across the wood speech of burns, carvings warning Unfriendly Conductor, Town of No Sleep. Leftover wood turned to toys; three boards & somebody’s old rollerskate became a summer scooter. Bored, what was that? We were too busy being poor in that house air-conditioned all winter, too busy sharing everything, even bathwater evenings by the pipe stove. No plumbing, no rats, only mice thick enough to believe we had more than they did.

RUN AWAY from this sub- scriber for the second time are TWO NEGROES, viz. SMART, an outlandish dark fellow with his country marks on his temples and bearing the remarkable brand of my name on his left breast, last seen wearing an old ragged negro cloth shirt and breeches made of fearnought; also DIDO, a likely young wench of a yellow cast, born in cherrytime in this parish, wearing a mixed coloured coat with a bundle of clothes, mostly blue, under her one good arm. Both speak tolerable plain English and may insist on being called Cuffee and Khasa respect- ively. Whoever shall deliver the said goods to the gaoler in Baton Rouge, or to the Sugar House in the parish, shall receive all reasonable charges plus a genteel reward besides what the law allows. In the mean time all persons are strictly forbid harbouring them, on pain of being prosecuted to the utmost rigour of the law. Ten guineas will be paid to anyone who can give intelligence of their being harboured, employed, or enter- tained by a white person upon his sentence; five on conviction of a black. All Masters of vessels are warned against carrying them out of state, as they may claim to be free. If any of the above Negroes return of their own accord, they may still be for- given by ELIZABETH YOUNG.

I hunted heaven for him. No dice. Too uppity, it was. Not enough music, or dark dirt. I begged the earth empty of him. Death believes in us whether we believe or not. For a long while I watch the sound of a boy bouncing a ball down the block take its time to reach me. Father, find me when you want. I’ll wait.

The country I come from Is called the Midwest —Bob Dylan I want to be doused in cheese & fried. I want to wander the aisles, my heart's supermarket stocked high as cholesterol. I want to die wearing a sweatsuit— I want to live forever in a Christmas sweater, a teddy bear nursing off the front. I want to write a check in the express lane. I want to scrape my driveway clean myself, early, before anyone's awake— that'll put em to shame— I want to see what the sun sees before it tells the snow to go. I want to be the only black person I know. I want to throw out my back & not complain about it. I wanta drive two blocks. Why walk— I want love, n stuff— I want to cut my sutures myself. I want to jog down to the river & make it my bed— I want to walk its muddy banks & make me a withdrawal. I tried jumping in, found it frozen— I'll go home, I guess, to my rooms where the moon changes & shines like television.

Praise the restless beds Praise the beds that do not adjust that won't lift the head to feed or lower for shots or blood or raise to watch the tinny TV Praise the hotel TV that won't quit its murmur & holler Praise the room service that doesn't exist just the slow delivery to the front desk of cooling pizzas & brown bags leaky greasy & clear Praise the vending machines Praise the change Praise the hot water & the heat or the loud cool that helps the helpless sleep. Praise the front desk who knows to wake Rm 120 when the hospital rings Praise the silent phone Praise the dark drawn by thick daytime curtains after long nights of waiting, awake. Praise the waiting & then praise the nothing that's better than bad news Praise the wakeup call at 6 am Praise the sleeping in Praise the card hung on the door like a whisper lips pressed silent Praise the stranger's hands that change the sweat of sheets Praise the checking out Praise the going home to beds unmade for days Beds that won't resurrect or rise that lie there like a child should sleeping, tubeless Praise this mess that can be left

Wake to find everything black what was white, all the vice versa—white maids on TV, black sitcoms that star white dwarfs cute as pearl buttons. Black Presidents, Black Houses. White horse candidates. All bleach burns clothes black. Drive roads white as you are, white songs on the radio stolen by black bands like secret pancake recipes, white back-up singers, ball-players & boxers all white as tar. Feathers on chickens dark as everything, boiling in the pot that called the kettle honky. Even whites of the eye turn dark, pupils clear & changing as a cat's. Is this what we've wanted & waited for? to see snow covering everything black as Christmas, dark pages written white upon? All our eclipses bright, dark stars shooting across pale sky, glowing like ash in fire, shower every skin. Only money keeps green, still grows & burns like grass under dark daylight.

Back there then I lived across the street from a home for funerals—afternoons I’d look out the shades

I am hoping to hang your head on my wall in shame— the slightest taxidermy thrills me. Fish forever leaping on the living-room wall— paperweights made from skulls of small animals. I want to wear your smile on my sleeve & break your heart like a horse or its leg. Weeks of being bucked off, then all at once, you're mine— Put me down. I want to call you thine to tattoo mercy along my knuckles.I assassin down the avenue I hope to have you forgotten by noon. To know you by your knees palsied by prayer. Loneliness is a science— consider the taxidermist's tender hands trying to keep from losing skin, the bobcat grin of the living.

Baby, give me just one more hiss We must lake it fast morever I want to cold you in my harms & never get lo I live you so much it perts! Baby, jive me gust one more bliss Whisper your neat nothings in my near Can we hock each other one tore mime? All light wrong? Baby give me just one more briss My won & homely You wake me meek in the needs Mill you larry me? Baby, hive me just one more guess With this sing I’ll thee shed