Undergraduate class today brought up this poem
and I thought I'd read it for them.
This is called "800 Days Libation"
and it's an elegy for Kalief Browder.
And if you don't know his story, when he was 16 years old,
he allegedly stole a backpack and was
sent to Rikers, which is a maximum security
prison in New York.
And through a bunch of bureaucratic bullshit,
he never went to trial and he always claimed his innocence.
And so, they kept him at Rikers.
And because he was so small and vulnerable
and was often beat up, they put him in solitary confinement
for over 800 days.
Through some activism, he was able to get out,
but shortly thereafter he committed suicide.
It rained inside me.
It is raining inside my neck.
The rain falls in sheets and sidelong sheets.
Inside, all the rain is falling inside.
Collapsing spit.
I don't want to watch another Black man die today, or know
the story of how he died today, or how he was thrown away,
or how he ended up.
I don't want to study the rain from inside the house
or overhear wild rain swell and thick and slap the roof
with wet words.
And Kalief, who was there when you stop being?
And who was there when you were alone and beyond yourself?
How the water around you, from the island around you,
might have sounded like a chorus.
Who was there, who was there, who was there.
And now everyone is watching your life from inside,
but I'm afraid to watch them beat you.
Watch, torture, throbbing, try.
And long with ache and blue black bruising.
So I don't.
And another Black body is blown out smoking wick.
The lone wisp of a life lingers, smelling burnt and gone.
How rain wraps around a tornado is a type of sorrow.
Because no one knows how to fathom damage inside.
Someone's eyes could be the weather, just
after or before a storm.
Calm and clear, but still bleaker inside the black parts
of the pupils.
The whole smooth black holes in the eyes, if they left you
in the hole with no rain.
And I'm emptying a waterfall shouting Kalief.
I want you to be undead and not alone.
Lonely in the ground, again.
I want, I want, I want so much.
How it reads like a fist of pounding rain on your body,
bleeding broke.
But what I want doesn't matter.
What I want are rare blossoms for the dead because you're
gone and your mother is gone.
All because someone said you stole
a backpack, meaning your body was made of forgotten.
Alter your body, made bodyless.
Kept pushing back, as your trial kept
pushing back and back and black matter moves backwards in time,
meaning Kalief matters in the past tense.
Even though the space around your life
didn't matter to them or them or them.
Like the space that scatters and navigates
around the circumference of raindrops is never wet
and the braided distance between you and me is dry and long.
Like time is rainless, with a tight and bloated lung full.
Blowing 800 candles out for the 800 days in solitary.
Your brain behind bars fades.
Your brain and confinement, your chest cage.
And alone, your body.
Alone, all I hear is your name falling and beating, Kalief.
Kalief.
Kalief, Kalief.
This is such a poor offering, but I'm pouring it
on the ground like good rain.
And whatever softens the Earth is your name.
Whatever might grow from that darkening bright spot is
your name.
Lapping little lakes of creation turning mud in your name.
Whatever might be fed from the liquid raining inside me,
whatever might be loosened from the muck and the dark rum
pouring from my bottle.
And Kalief, your name is drizzling
a type of grief upon my mouth like mist as it
rains inside me.
This rain inside my body, the rain falls in sheets.
Inside, all the rain is untangled and not touching.
Who touched you with the tenderness falling inside?
And Kalief, what is there to say after so much rain?
The ground is swollen with your name.