WEBVTT

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Thank you, Angel.

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Thank everyone affiliated
with the Poetry Center.

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On July 3, 1976, I had a son.

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He was beautiful, curly
hair, always laughing.

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I was a young person, though.

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I was a young mother.

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I kind of figured out
what I wanted to do.

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But I didn't know anything.

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I still wanted to party.

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I still wanted to you know?

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It's like I wanted to be a
mother, but I wanted to be--

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I think it was--

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I'm think I had
probably just turned 20.

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And I was my son's friend.

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We kind of grew up together.

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And my connection to
the project is my son.

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Every once in a while, police
would show up at my door.

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And they would ask him
questions about somebody

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else, a friend of his.

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And he would talk to them.

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But when you have a
young Black child,

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you have to know that anyone
outside of your family who

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talks to him has a plan.

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And there was a plan for my son.

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So a couple of
pieces, that was sort

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of my strongest connection.

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And I wound up interviewing
my son because there

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was so much that I didn't know.

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And so a couple of the
pieces are about him.

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But the phone rings sometimes.

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I have to decide to
answer the phone.

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When I click to pick it up,
this is the way it goes.

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There's that blip of echoed air.

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And I say, hello, hello,
before his new mama,

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disembodied, white female,
middle American, all-purpose

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monotone, informs me
I have a collect call

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from an inmate of the
Middlesex House of Corrections.

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In the silence left open
for his name, my son

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barks, Damon, gravel and
guttural and studied bad ass.

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And, oh, I realize
blind walking into what

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now passes for ritual,
it's just my son again.

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His cage gracelessly
unlatched, so

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that he can mumble temporarily
reach into other air

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and tell me that his cellmate
plans to kill him in his sleep.

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Then I'm just another drooped
mama in a ceaseless snaking

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line, summoning
my cinematic coup.

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Lately, it seems the
child is always, always

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about to be murdered.

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Only seconds later,
I'm being treated

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to a blow-by-blow chronicle
of the shaving of his head

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and the sloppy gouge when the
distracted barber's razor dug

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deep.

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And, mama, there was
blood everywhere.

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But it look all right now.

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Wait till you see.

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I'm bald headed.

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In the next breath,
I'm scared, mama.

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I'm sick.

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I cough all night.

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Then, as if he hadn't just
swift whispered that weakness,

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he shifts to a sputter of
jailhouse legalese bringing me

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up to date on his
creaky version of hope.

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And since I never
been in jail before

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and since I've been staying
out of trouble in here

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and since I've been
doing everything they

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say and since it wasn't my gun--

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but does it matter what
grace the system grants

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if he's eating well or wrong,
if the sentences run together

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or on top of one another, if
he's crazy about his mama?

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Because when dark drops and my
son can no longer fight sleep,

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a man, savagely focused, will
arc over him hefting a sock

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swollen with dead D batteries.

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Again, because of
the dozens of times

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he swears it's about
to happen, I've

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become an expert at envisioning
my son's already nicked skull

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collapsing and
slick with itself.

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200 miles away, I wince,
gamely where his wound.

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Two.

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There's a picture of
Damon snapped over

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20 years ago when he was two.

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It's black and white,
just one unkempt moment

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in the life of a
kid, a snap only

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a mother craving an
unburdened memory could love.

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His gray sweatsuit
is caked with grime,

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his crown impossibly kinked.

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Staring at the phone--

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staring at the photo, I
long to plunge my hands

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into those raucous
snaps, kiss his nose,

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and scoop his resisting
wriggle into my arms,

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to snort that rusty
meld of sugar and funk.

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A voice interrupts, ma, ma.

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It is 20 years later again.

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I should have never
picked up the phone.

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Three.

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I can get in my car and drive
toward him filling three

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highway hours with
Motown's begging

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men, brown liquor, Aretha
songs, and those damned

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insistent pictures
of my boy the way

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he used to be, deadpan
jokester, giggling game cracker,

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stupefied by rockets and girls.

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Then, without mercy, he spouts
upward, dons cavernous denims,

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stows away screw
top wine, and morphs

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into OG cocked cannon,
baby maker, rhyme buster,

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lemming, lemming, lemming.

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The last picture, the one
of him I hate the most,

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stays with me the longest.

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There's the grasping whiner
who really needs canteen money

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but never thanks me for raising
his four-year-old daughter.

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He's the single syllable
grunt, head scarred,

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grossly swollen from
prison workouts,

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who I avoid mentioning to
friends whose sons are waving

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grad school acceptance
letters or touring

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France with their jazz bands.

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The most I will let on,
he's in Boston on his own.

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I don't say he's locked up.

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But the phone rings sometimes.

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Four.

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The waiting rooms
are always too hot.

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I don't lift my eyes often.

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But when I do, I see
faces that mirror my own.

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Our whole bodies sigh.

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We are in sweatshirts
and jeans, graying hair

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pulled back, eyes straight
ahead, waiting for our sons

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on the fresh air side
of bulletproof glass.

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A buzzer sounds.

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And a door slides open
for their strained parade.

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They shuffle as if shackled
by boredom, plump and sinew,

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suave in jumpsuits
the color of storm.

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They are missing molars,
sunken bellies, downcast gaze,

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gang love scorched into biceps.

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Numbed and innocent,
numbed and guilty,

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they stream in, scanning the
drab room for mama or bae

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or my dear or maybe somebody,
anybody from the block,

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somebody who
remembers them free.

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Like toddlers, they hug
awkwardly, check out

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who else has come
to see who else,

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slyly size up their
tribe, and greedily

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eye the vending machines broken
and bulging with poisons.

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I scour faces, wonder if
my son's homicidal cellmate

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has allowed him dawn.

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And then there he is.

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Damon, damn him, serves
up that grin guaranteed

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to slap my heart open.

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He sputters a few words.

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See how big my arms are getting?

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Then shuts to a silence, waiting
for mama to come through,

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mutter a flimsy bandage,
make it all better.

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Looking down the
long sorrowful row,

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I see that expectant
hush repeated, repeated.

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All those mothers
wanting desperately

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to be there but wishing
they hadn't come.

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If only we'd stayed
home listening

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to the phone ring and
ring and not picking up,

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we could just keep staring
out at our own jails

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into an unbending dark wallowing
in blue and waiting for the sun

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to rise.

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