This poem has immediate truth. On December 28, I was called "Nigga" for the first time, by a young black man who was smoking in an enclosed, 2-bench, plexi-glass, bus wait-station at Kennedy, with the only sign inside being a big "No Smoking" framed in red.
Mary & I had just arrived there to wait for the #8 bus, and he was smoking with his girlfriend. I asked him to put the cigarette out, and he told me to get a cop. Nowadays, that's a terribly challenging thing for a young black man to do, and the references were not lost on me.
After talking back and forth, him digging his feet in, I walked over to him to have him leave. As soon as I touched his arm, he called me "Nigga!" I said, "Whaa-aat?" Once he was outside – (pushing me as he was backing away from me (each push sent him back in the air, not me, with my hands now in my coat pocket)) – he took a couple more drags off his cigarette and threw it off to the side.
I sat down inside, he came in, wondering if my kicking him out was a racist thing. Mary told him that I was with her, and that she thought it was a guy thing. I said, "You were smoking.”
And so the poem goes:
His own fault lines splitting his tongue, toxic and tender. He’s crying for help from the bottom of the ocean.
Would he have understood, if I had called him brother as the poem suggest? Maybe so. Maybe it should have been that kind of guy thing.
This poem has immediate truth. On December 28, I was called "Nigga" for the first time, by a young black man who was smoking in an enclosed, 2-bench, plexi-glass, bus wait-station at Kennedy, with the only sign inside being a big "No Smoking" framed in red.
ReplyDeleteMary & I had just arrived there to wait for the #8 bus, and he was smoking with his girlfriend. I asked him to put the cigarette out, and he told me to get a cop. Nowadays, that's a terribly challenging thing for a young black man to do, and the references were not lost on me.
After talking back and forth, him digging his feet in, I walked over to him to have him leave. As soon as I touched his arm, he called me "Nigga!" I said, "Whaa-aat?" Once he was outside – (pushing me as he was backing away from me (each push sent him back in the air, not me, with my hands now in my coat pocket)) – he took a couple more drags off his cigarette and threw it off to the side.
I sat down inside, he came in, wondering if my kicking him out was a racist thing. Mary told him that I was with her, and that she thought it was a guy thing. I said, "You were smoking.”
And so the poem goes:
His own fault lines splitting his tongue,
toxic and tender. He’s crying for help
from the bottom of the ocean.
Would he have understood, if I had called him brother as the poem suggest? Maybe so. Maybe it should have been that kind of guy thing.
~~~~~
Thank you for sharing this story, Rus.
ReplyDeleteAppreciate your sharing, Rus. --Jesse
ReplyDelete