WEBVTT

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If my mother were ever
convicted for her addiction

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like my father, I wonder
who I would be robbing now.

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The data from the
Fragile Families studies

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say my kind of survival displays
more behavioral problems

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and early juvenile delinquency.

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I say, you right.

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I rode into the night with
a pistol in my gray hoodie,

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spitting image of my father.

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His nickname akin to bone.

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His red skin the only thing I
remember him towering over me.

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Black hair, red bloodshot eyes
already running, already gone.

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This was the closest
time I ever came

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to becoming a woman with
a number for a name.

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It is easier than you
think to lose yourself

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in search of resemblance.

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Politicians with
expensive silk ties

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cut taxes, pad pockets,
sterilized would-be mothers,

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charge their district
with the bill.

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Cue reality TV series
suggest art programs

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to settle the inmates
and wonder why

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humans climb the
walls trying to escape

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their own skin after the
teaching artist is asked

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to stop bringing in poems that
encourage collective behavior.

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A father gives you his hands.

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Two, your mother laughs
with the breath of a ghost.

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C, no one remembers
how much you cried.

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Five, there are more houses in
your throat than one can count.

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E, you forgot how
to count because you

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forget how to say I love you.

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Eight, your grandmother
is a steeple.

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Nine, you love how love
sounds more than how it works.

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10, you love how love works more
than how to hold the pieces.

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11, your father
showed you how love

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works with his absent mouth.

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J, I love you.

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K, your grandmother
is a steeple.

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You are only a
cemetery meandering.

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14, you can bury anything
inside these hands.

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14.5, your best with the dirt.

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15, you wear a printed t-shirt
to the local farmers market.

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The black letters read:
do not get lost here.

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There is nothing but white soot.

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Marathon runs of Wentworth mist
the room like smoke clouds.

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And I know TV is only
TV to someone that

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had never been forced to look
outside their own heartbreak

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before.

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I binge-watched the
Australian television drama.

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After a several week
streaming stint,

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I find myself crying,
crying, crying

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for the world which held
my father, and uncles,

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and brother, and
cousins like a fist.

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What's a cliff dive to a Black
man hustled by his own country?

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He earns $0.92 an hour and
my tuition still ain't free.

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The woman behind the
financial aid counter

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asked me what my father makes.

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I say furniture
for the dorms here.

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I say, grandfatherless children.

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I say, I don't know, I don't
know, I don't know who he is.

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No one prays for their babies.

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I entered the gates
of a boys' prison

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menacing the border
of Bristol, England.

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The smell that refuses to leave
my jean jacket three days later

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must resemble the
air of Pelican Bay.

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I tossed the jacket in
the trash, privilege

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with the ability to
push away the dilemma

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of a nation-induced disorder.

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Nation induced disorder was
the original name of this poem

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until I realized it is a
worldwide condition fueled

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by capitalism.

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This global epidemic is rampant
in Thailand, Australia, Mexico,

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Honduras, Brazil, Papua, New
Guinea, Ukraine, and Belize.

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This must be the
scent of apathy.

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And still this is
the closest I'll ever

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come to visiting my father.

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I remember death.

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Yesterday, Nipsey
Hussle was mowed down

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in front of his clothing
store on Slauson and Crenshaw.

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The world raged,
a forest of dying

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like a glaring of fangs
brimming into neighboring fur,

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or a gang of buffalo broadside
beneath the Compton skyline,

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or a parade of elephant
eulogies moving in silence,

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or a cauldron of bats
darkening every street

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to match the ardere of a people.

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Our young, a rump of
otter-uttered blessings facing

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the bleak-faced crash
as an ambush of tigers

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scowl at their audacity.

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The babies wail
for justice, their

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screams full of
drift and red blues.

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This is how we grieve:
candles, and teddy bears,

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and flowers, and posters,
tear and prayer hands,

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and wailing, and wailing,
fighting and swinging,

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and singing, and singing
for the flawed men

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that search for redemption, for
the men that remind us of home.

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Just minutes away in
Inglewood, California,

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my uncle pulls his blue
plastic folding chair

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under the nearest shaded
tree in the communal yard

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to watch the passersby.

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My uncle's youngest brother
has been dead for years.

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He sits outside, anyway.

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I wonder if he can still
smell the See's Candy factory

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two blocks away.

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Does he remember how sweet
and satisfying a taste

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after we pooled our mangled
silver together for lollipops?

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Does he still wait for
my gone uncle to visit?

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Is that what he's
risking under the sun?

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I remember.

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So if I can write, I do.

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If I can write, I do.

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Today when the sky
is forgiving enough,

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and the smog pretends itself
an heirloom of history,

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I am sky dumb, cloud
sick until still.

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There, in the corner
of my smile is

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a poem waiting to be
picked up, dusted off,

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and shined real good.

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But all I can muster
is the strength

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to pull myself to
the bathroom mirror

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and try to relocate
my father's rage.

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Instead, I find you, silly
poem waiting to be seen,

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waiting to be.

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If I can write, I do.

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If I can write, I do.

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If I can write, I do.

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I do.

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The quietest time of the day
is when I hold my breath,

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sit back and suck in my stomach,
close my eye into thin slits

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and whistle.

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The room is only a room not
judge and jury, not a system

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of impossible fractions.

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When I share this poem, shape
the aftermath of a mudslide

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into something compact and ready
to be carried into the world

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beyond the steel bars,
I pretend my father

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is in the back of the
room, red, red baby.

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Of course you want to know
what my father must have done

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to be locked up all my life.

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How many drugs did he sell?

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How many bodies did he
leave without breath?

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None.

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None.

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Of course, dear reader,
you cannot imagine a thief

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so spectacular, so magical in
his sleight of hand that he

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left the world without a trace
or manslaughter, or abuse,

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or addiction.

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Of course, of course,
all of the above,

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possibly a collage
of victimless crimes.

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No, just the audacity
to refuse a plea.

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Mercy, his nickname go.

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I wonder as I am writing this
in a time in which poets accuse

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each other of noncommittal
words like "wonder"

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if I may interject this
placement of the word

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simply acknowledges that the
writer, narrator is still

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in search of an answer to
the wonderment presented.

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But lean in friend, let
me tell you what I know.

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The writer's father has
been gone, gone, gone.

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And so she fears she will
never truly understand or know.

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Yes, this moment of
unknowing is her attempt

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to completely level the
obstructive field of vision.

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It is ultimately an example
of how the writer imagines her

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father whole and how the writer
deconstructs the intention

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behind these
daughter-sans-daddy-induced

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theories.

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Does he approve
of my line breaks?

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How strategic I
can be, as I pass

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his carcass throughout the
audience like an offering.

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