So when I talked to my son, he told me
that there was an old guy who would wake up
in the middle of the night and sing,
but he would only sing like one really long note,
like (SINGING), kind of gospelly and bluesy and stuff.
And his name was Willie, but they
called him Lonesome Willie.
The poem is called "In the Middle of the Night Lonesome
Willie Opens His Mouth to Sing One Long, Keyless, Perfectly
Ugly Note."
"Which should upset the cell block, but doesn't.
That lonesome boy unlooses a grand, exalted stank,
an undone edge that rollicks that block.
And that note say just one just one thing,
sizzling slide and edge snatch, gaping screen on a Mississippi
door.
My dearest bellowed, lord have mercy, Willie!
Close that door before them flies come in.
Alleys of rust in the way an old man flap-mouth kisses.
Stove top sagging with scarred pots
crammed with the grayer dubious parts of fig.
Barely Dee Jelly jelly jars brimming sweet slosh
of hard brown water served suppers
that just may be not all the way unplucked.
Willie dreams that old dance, leg tangle leg, Chi Town juke,
sipping all his sweet silver, and Franklin, Aretha,
and Hooker John Lee.
Colored folks got a right particular English,
ash as a skin color, and nose as a landscape.
West side, best side.
Scratched 45s on reject, reject mixtapes,
crammed with Willie's sure-fire coochie songs,
wound and rewound with that number 2 pencil.
Month-old grease getting its skin
on in that jar by the sink.
8-hour Negro funerals and Carnival to the rafters.
Furious wag drooping the dance floor.
Ain't no way on Saturday night.
Ain't no way, but one on Sunday morning.
Rotten molars and drooping balls and ER aspirin,
Lonesome chewing on toothpicks all damn day.
Nobody talking out loud about lips and noses.
Bop and back that ass up.
Borders and boundaries that stay trembling.
Under soul, overwhelmed, dog-tired aunties
in that 6:00 AM chitlin assembly line.
Three times around under hot water.
Unapologetic hogs heading [INAUDIBLE],, and hard
fried chicken skin.
And we just like it in public.
The way your skin smells before somebody really,
really knows it, and that sweet stink after it's been loved on.
Slow grind against the bathroom wall.
Playlists cracking your belly.
The limp in your pimp walk.
The idling motor in your Cadillac.
Backhand slap.
Bandana do sweat it flat.
War is all over the TV.
Temptation, miracle, supreme, dead David Ruffin,
and where did Koko Taylor pull that voice up from?
Sharkskin slacks, lavender, alligator kicks, juice denim,
butt crack had its birth in the ravaged black body.
It slip-slides through a peculiar blood.
Turns out.
Jump back, baby.
Jump back.
Dimmed pink by the Tallahatchie, a bodega
and Baptist blood of four hours in the middle
of the damn street.
Ferguson blood.
Jump back, baby.
Jump back.
Jump back, baby.
Jump back.
Hands cuffed, but suicide in the back of a police cruiser
anyhow.
Blood.
A Cottonwood blanches blood.
All the time a newborn blood.
One more time, relentless, Black folk like roaches.
Can't kill them.
You step on them, and they throw their heads back.
And all the time folks think the next step is laughter.
Goddamn!
Finally, Soul Train line time.
Slot electric, patch cabbage, twine time,
twist like you did last summer.
How the body jumps.
41 bullets.
How the body jumps in your grandmama's backyard.
How the body jumps into its chalk outline.
How the body jumps.
Oh, god, a gushing wound.
How the body jumps.
Blue rotating light.
And back road.
How that body jumps.
Its tagged toe.
It's resilient.
Its repeat.
It's remixed.
How that beautiful brown body jumps and jumps,
dancing in a loop of that one blue lyric,
growled by a sleepy jailhouse elder
with a two-syllable sickness for a name."
[APPLAUSE]