What's up, Arizona?
Logan's introduction is actually my set.
Thank you very much.
I'm really glad to be here.
I'm going to read poems from Gully, of course.
I'm going to read a number of new poems as well.
And depending on what the room feels like,
I might even read a short story.
Gully is-- I grew up in Trinidad and Tobago.
And Gully is about--
the first half of Gully, at least,
is about being a fan of cricket.
I swear to God.
More than simply being a fan of the game, I grew up at a time
when the West Indies cricket team dominated the sport
like it had never been dominated before.
So the first half is about what it
was like to be young and black at a time
when Black men dominated this white, colonial, gentlemen's
game, right?
Gully is a fielding position in the sport.
And the second half is now that 20 odd years later, I
am also Black and American.
Kind of what the immigrant translation makes of gully.
So it's also what gully means within the hip hop context
within the Black urban context.
So that's kind of where that's coming from.
And that's that.
So I'll start off with this poem, which is
in the second half of the book.
For about six years or so in my 20s, I worked in a synagogue
in New York.
And so this poem is about that experience.
It's called "The Allegory of the Black Man at Work
in a Synagogue."
"My name is Roger Anthony Bonair-Agard.
My name is a myth of its own creation.
My name has given me by an anxious history.
The meat of it is always about loss and return.
I was born between two rivers in a valley
of a shadow of blackness.
My name means famous spear.
It is old German.
It is the purview of warriors.
My name means priceless.
It is old Latin.
It is the purview of kings.
My name means beautiful one.
It is old French.
I wear it like a sixth finger.
When I was 23, I manage the records
of membership and death.
Membership and death bear their own names.
They keep mine locked in the safe of their own mythology.
So when the old man says, fuck you.
I say my name means free to go about my own business.
They came to me with solemn voices to purchase plots,
to give them seats in the temple.
They did not recognize my name.
Are you French?
Are you a Jew?
Are you Black?
May I speak to someone white?
They came to me with celebration.
This is my son David.
This is my daughter Rebecca, Rosenbaum, Miller, Tisch,
Mandel.
They brought me their tidings of laughter, history, wine,
hubris, hate.
I gathered them onto me to make myself new armor.
My name is the first-born son of a single mother.
She's always a basket on a river.
She's named after a beautiful boy.
Her name is the purview of gods.
She holds onto me like a promise.
She gave me literature and the love of all things holy.
And rum is holy.
And dominoes are holy.
And the smell of night-blooming jasmine is holy.
She adorns her walls with a crawl of bougainvillea.
And these, too, are holy.
During the high holy days, they come to me
for seats in the temple.
They come to me without knowing my name.
They come to me without knowing the meanings
of likeness and image.
But they offer me bottles of wine and courtside seats.
They do not speak to me if I do not have a name tag.
They do not look long enough to see the name tag.
My name means invisible.
It does not belong to me.
My name means holder of seats which are closest to God.
My name means holder of land which is closest to death.
I'm 23 years old.
I'm a litany of violence.
I am moon on a dance floor.
They advised me like their own son.
They urge me back to school.
They urge me back into the campus of my own mind.
My name means guardian.
It is old Norman French.
My name means elaborate caskets and endowments for the temple.
I'm 26 years old.
I do not know my name.
I am untethered as a cloud.
They come to me with new ways to talk about race.
They come to me with the words and new literatures.
My mother's name means music, means builder of things.
She gave me fists and a fencer's tongue.
My name means builder of things.
They come to me with poetry.
It is the purview of the lost.
Thank god, they have come.
My name means hunger.
My body means hunger.
I'm a litany of hunger.
All these poems-- hunger."