Testify

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.