Maybe the Saddest Thing Read online

  THE NATIONAL POETRY SERIES

  The National Poetry Series was established in 1978 to ensure the publication of five poetry books annually through five participating publishers. Publication is funded by the Lannan Foundation; Stephen Graham; the Joyce & Seward Johnson Foundation; Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds; the Poetry Foundation; Olaf Olafsson; Mr. & Mrs. Michael Newhouse; Jennifer Rubell; The New York Community Trust; Elizabeth Christopherson; and Aristides Georgantas.

  2011 Competition Winners

  With Venom and Wonder, by Julianne Buchsbaum of Lawrence, KS

  Chosen by Lucie Brock-Broido, to be published by Penguin Books

  Your Invitation to a Modest Breakfast, by Hannah Gamble of Chicago, IL

  Chosen by Bernadette Mayer, to be published by Fence Books

  Green Is for World, by Juliana Leslie of Santa Cruz, CA

  Chosen by Ange Mlinko, to be published by Coffee House Press

  Exit, Civilian, by Idra Novey of Brooklyn, NY

  Chosen by Patricia Smith, to be published by University of Georgia Press

  Maybe the Saddest Thing, by Marcus Wicker of Ann Arbor, MI

  Chosen by D. A. Powell, to be published by HarperCollins Publishers

  Contents

  The National Poetry Series

  I. Maybe the Saddest Thing

  To You

  Love Letter to Flavor Flav

  Self-Dialogue Watching Richard Pryor Live on the Sunset Strip

  Love Letter to RuPaul

  Love Letter to Justin Timberlake

  Love Letter to Pam Grier

  Love Letter to Jim Kelly

  1999

  Oblivious Spring

  About the Time Two Ducks Advised Me on Matters of the Flesh

  Interrupting Aubade Ending in Epiphany

  Everything I Know About Jazz I Learned from Kenny G

  Self-Dialogue Camping at Yellowwood State Forest

  To a White Friend Who Wonders Why I Don’t Spend More Time Pontificating the N Word

  Love Letter to Bruce Leroy

  1998

  Self-Dialogue Staring at a Mirror

  I remember the scene in that movie

  Some Revisions

  Love Letter to Dave Chappelle

  Jazz Musicians

  The CEO of Happiness Speaks

  Self-Dialogue with Marcus

  Something Like Sleep

  I’m a Sad, Sad Man. So Sad

  To You

  Nature of the Beast

  Maybe the Saddest Thing

  II. Beats, Breaks & B-Sides

  Ars Poetica in the Mode of J-Live

  When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong

  When faced with the statement “there are more black men in jail than college,” I think Order of Operations

  Stakes Is High

  The Light

  Bonita Applebum

  Who in their right mind thinks they can put a stop to hip-hop, if it don’t stop till I stop, and I don’t stop till it stops?

  The Message or Public Service Announcement Trailing a Meth Lab Explosion

  The Chronic

  The Break Beat Break

  Notes on Beats, Breaks & B-Sides

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  * * *

  MAYBE THE SADDEST THING

  * * *

  To You

  The mute boy piano

  virtuoso in the deep

  stone well.

  That single-body

  cold each day.

  That, nights, he thinks

  he shrieks.

  That moonless dark

  blotting out a mouth

  hippo-wide. Hole

  puncher is to paper

  as who is to poem?

  Easier magnifying

  glass than mirror.

  O, the things unseen:

  enflamed epiglottis,

  small busted voice

  box, symphonies

  scratched on stone

  well lines—more

  loose leaf, really,

  than ledger.

  This void—that boy

  is or could be you—

  depending on the eye.

  Unless, you’ve never

  longed—to be seen,

  heard so bad. That,

  nights, you cave—

  cancel the self.

  Say it sad and plain:

  that this poem

  is a void.

  That this well is

  as far as your voice

  has ever carried.

  Love Letter to Flavor Flav

  We know we are beautiful. And ugly too.

  —LANGSTON HUGHES

  I think I love you.

  How you suck fried chicken grease

  off chalkboard fingers, in public!

  Or walk the wrong way down an escalator

  with a clock around your neck.

  How you rapped about the poor

  with a gold-tooth grin.

  How your gold teeth spell your name.

  How you love your name is beautiful.

  You shout your name 100 times each day.

  They say, if you repeat something enough

  you can become it. I’d like to know:

  Does Flavor Flaaav! sound ugly to you?

  I think it’s slightly beautiful.

  I bet you love mirrors.

  Tell the truth,

  when you find plastic Viking horns

  or clown shades staring back,

  is it beauty you see?

  Or Vaudeville?

  To express myself honestly enough;

  that, my friend, is very hard to do.

  Those are Bruce Lee’s words.

  I mention Bruce Lee here, only

  because you remind me of him.

  That’s a lie. But your shades do

  mirror a mask he wore

  as Green Hornet’s trusty sidekick.

  No, I’m not calling names.

  Chuck D would have set cities on fire

  had you let him.

  You were not Public Enemy’s sidekick.

  You hosed down whole crowds

  in loudmouth flame-retardant spit.

  You did this only by repeating your name.

  Flavor Flaaav! Flavor Flaaav!

  I think I love you. I think I really might

  mean it this time.

  William. Can I call you William?

  I should have asked 27 lines ago:

  What have you become?

  How you’ve lived saying nothing

  save the same words each day

  is a kind of freedom or beauty.

  Please, tell me I’m not lying to us.

  Self-Dialogue Watching Richard Pryor Live on the Sunset Strip

  What of stepping outside the door on fire?

  What of running down a faceless road

  Let alone a busy strip, enflamed? Got-damn!

  There must be 10,000 selves in an epidermis. Imagine

  Yours. Imagine the skin-peeling flame of each self-

  Inflicted arson. Imagine the freedom to say God

  Damn! To consider what that feels like. To speak

  A wild geyser spraying from a busted hydrant.

  You watch Richard Pryor in a loud fire engine

  Red suit—all flashing lights, sirens: 10,000 selves

  Visible to the world, & consider what that feels like.

  To think, you may or may not be God damned.

  To know, at least, your dick is intact.

  Love Letter to RuPaul

  You have one of the longest,

  thickest, most
veined, colossal

  set of hands that I have ever seen

  and, frankly, they cast a spell on me.

  Not that I’m the type of man

  who goes around checking out

  other men’s hands, but I know

  tightly tucked cuticles

  when I see them. Even sexier

  is the hourglass-shaping choke hold

  you can put on a mic.

  You could hurl a two-foot monkey

  wrench at a mirror

  or pull out

  and push in a date’s chair

  with the flick of a wrist.

  I bet you don’t though. Bet you’ve never

  carried a man up four flights of stairs,

  limp arms flailing every which way.

  And if you have, I bet you took care

  to cradle his neck. To avoid banisters

  and to walk slowly. Because you are fierce

  in the way only a 6'7"black drag queen could be.

  In one of my earliest memories, you are wearing

  a pink sequined dress, endorsing a hamburger

  Good enough for a man. Maybe a woman.

  I am a black man who has never worn pink—

  not a polo to a country club. Not gators

  to a church. And still, that commercial

  ravished me. How hard, to be sandwiched

  between what and who you are, tickled

  by every cruel wind, critic-voyeur

  playing rough beneath your skirt. How

  raw you must be. To sit before a camera,

  legs uncrossed.

  Love Letter to Justin Timberlake

  When I think of you

  it is always of a small, locked room.

  A principal’s dark, full lips

  pressed together in a smirk. A glare

  from his fat, gold herringbone chain

  burning tears in my eyes, my face

  red as yours in direct sunlight. And

  even as my voice shut down

  that day, I knew ditching

  to buy *NSYNC’s CD

  was worth more than

  Prescriptive Speech class.

  What I heard: four voices

  harmonized in a plastic bottle.

  Your falsetto, blowing the top off.

  Michael Jackson

  with no abusive boxer father

  or snatched childhood.

  Sam Cooke

  sans German shepherds

  stalking through his songs.

  I’ve been watching James Brown

  and Jackie Wilson make

  pelvic fixation public domain

  since I was old enough

  to work a remote. And I have yet

  to elude starched lines. How did you

  learn to dance your way out of boxes?

  Or did you

  find it easy as breathing, like whistling

  the national anthem?

  Do you remember the Super Bowl?

  How you tore Janet Jackson’s breast

  from her top?

  I love you that way.

  Her earth-brown bounty of flesh—

  large, black nipple

  pierced, wind chapped, hardened.

  And you saying, Go ahead. Look.

  Love Letter to Pam Grier

  Dearest Pam,

  I still dream of you.

  College. Our second date.

  How the ceiling fan would not cure

  my fever that day, the white walls

  beaded in sweat. I could have killed

  my white friend for walking in on us.

  Or kissed him right there in the dorms.

  Damn the smoldering Newport cherry

  that bathed my room in red. And you

  cocking back that cold, hard Glock

  against Samuel L. Jackson’s dick.

  My white friend and I, we could have

  unzipped in front of the TV screen

  and wrestled for the tube of Lubriderm.

  I don’t know what scared me more:

  my roommate’s wood or the camera,

  out of breath, climbing mountains—

  those muscled, brown thighs.

  How were we supposed to compete

  with Sam? Richard Pryor? Or Kareem?

  With any man on your list of lays?

  My mother’s answer: fuck foreplay—

  the other Pam’s bed-tanned Baywatch

  castmates taped to her teen son’s wall.

  For my thirteenth birthday she framed you

  garnishing a large bed in red lingerie.

  I’m sorry. I never hung your poster.

  Even now I don’t know how

  to love you right. But I suspect I was

  onto something back in middle school,

  unsticking the other Pam

  to make room for my present—

  four walls. So blank

  and unassuming.

  Love Letter to Jim Kelly

  When it comes, I won’t even notice it.

  I’ll be too busy looking good.

  —JIM KELLY, FROM ENTER THE DRAGON

  See a clumped baby-fro budding below

  Enter the Dragon’s hyperbolic grunts

  and you, unsheathing that samurai sword

  from bulging, white bell-bottoms—slaying eight

  flower dresses in one scene. Or strangling,

  with plucked chest hairs, wide-open women cops.

  Imagine: a black silk pajama shirt

  blown open. A boy leering on the couch.

  Now picture my mom, Delilah, with shears.

  Mother sees you and thinks, lothario.

  Will not hear that besting another man

  ten-gallon-fro intact

  is Western as a Marlboro Man ad.

  But you know your business, Jim. I see you.

  1999

  We used to angle our asses off.

  Like, say Cindy the flautist’s

  blouse was see-through. Say

  she was sporting a tight Les

  Misérables camisole underneath.

  We might hit her off with an

  unexpected mixtape, all show

  tunes and power ballads. We might

  compare the lead actors’ recurring

  sparks to an echo. Might use this

  tidbit to tongue a girl down

  in the instrument closet. After

  school, fully dressed, bodies

  enmeshed like two wild-eyed

  ravenous stars, expressing

  their nature—barrel-roll style.

  Saliva-heavy kisses, lips

  smacking, rattling

  snare bottoms. We jockstrap

  gossip tweakers. I remember

  asking Ashley to Spring Fling

  because I’d heard

  of her oral inclination.

  We took notes, memorized

  what worked on who. Rico

  told me Ashley liked daisies.

  I appealed to her inner kid

  for weeks. Chased her

  around the timpani, tickled

  her midriff

  with a feather marching plume.

  Kept it on an innocent tip.

  Until she got thirsty

  at the dance.

  We walked past punch bowls

  to the main hall, held hands

  as she drank from a fountain.

  She made a left

  at the make-out corridor

  with droopy stems

  stuck to walls.

  I didn’t even get to kiss her

  face. I didn’t know Rico

  had followed us. Didn’t know

  he would jam Ashley’s

  hand down his pants. That

  she’d slip her other palm

  down mine. I didn’t even

  get to say Stop. Ashley,

  I’ve spent 50 lines, 3,892

  days flattering myself. Thinking

  I’d us
ed some next-level mind

  game to get you

  where, no, how, I wanted you.

  But you sized me up

  in under a minute. Examined

  the stain just left of my fly.

  & then you smirked, I knew it.

  Oblivious Spring

  DETROIT, MICHIGAN

  Obtuse red bolts cranked at each corner of the lot. Shirtless kids slapping hydrant-spray at largemouth-bass grins. Thin strands of water nearly blind Eastern Market cement. My wife, Jill, and I, we’re in the thick of it, managing to overstep their runoff. Gum-popping teen lovers and elderly couples are weeds in aisles. Row after weedy-row they knock our hips together as we browse every pink beaded hollyhock, golden black-eyed Susan, and perky, white, perspiring snapdragon on display. We take an oblong tub of crimson clover and red poppy off a vendor’s hands and I say the city is breathing. I prepare for a scene. Wait for her to miff our identical stride with a kiss and Oh, baby! I always wanted to marry a walking poem! Smiling, she reaches for my hand, locks her fingers for a moment, says Yes. Yes, it sure is.

  Mint, basil, thyme, and trout pot the breeze. Jill’s pinched nose and lips twisted east and west say she’s unsure of the aroma. She leads us to a corner bistro, plops her purse on a menu and I order Bloody Marys, no celery. A table between us, we smile awhile, talking about the garden we haven’t sown. Beneath the table, we place our feet on one another’s seats when hydrant-spray starts leaking against our tub. I look down to adjust her knotted gold anklet and sigh at a hummingbird, flapping near a cigar plant, in a banged-up plastic bed. She points just below the bird. Well would you look at that butterfly go to town on those little pistils! Jill. Oh, Jill. The things that woman sees.

  About the Time Two Ducks Advised Me on Matters of the Flesh

  The weight of last night’s bloody rib eye, wine, and crème soufflé has guilted us into the gym. Jill’s trying to take the StairMaster’s title again, sweat spilling from her brow like rain beyond the entrance window—a speed which rivals a woodpecker knocking at a telephone pole, after months spent idle in a sparse-stumped clearing. She looks left, laughs, and I can’t really blame her. What she sees is me cruising a stationary bike. Moisture has found my face. It begins at a glistening thigh palmed by spandex shorts. It ends in spittle dribbled down the chin. My mind is wandering Jill’s upstairs lair, tripping over bottled water lining her cupboard. I’m thinking about mud particles, decayed twigs, and demolished earthworms distilled. I’m wondering what it takes to kill a thing’s root. Beyond the sidewalk, dwelling in a sea of lawn, two Pekin ducks should be charged with lewd conduct. The larger, presumably male, bounces on the skinny one’s rump to the storm’s steady pulse. I try to smile at Jill but she’s headphones-deep in another world. The rain turns, beats harder on the gym roof. The drake’s wide orange bill begins to nip at the woman’s head. Lightning welts the sky and he’s pecking. Jill’s high-stepping something awful. Thunder shakes the window. Someone’s knocking wildly at someone’s skull. I stop.