When the Famous Black Poet speaks, <br />I understand <br /> <br />that his is the same unnervingly slow <br />rambling method of getting from A to B <br />that I hated in my father, <br />my father who always told me <br />don't shuffle. <br /> <br />The Famous Black Poet is <br />speaking of the dark river in the mind <br />that runs thick with the heroes of color, <br />Jackie R., Bessie, Billie, Mr. Paige, anyone <br />who knew how to sing or when to run. <br />I think of my grandmother, said <br />to have dropped dead from the evil eye, <br />of my lesbian aunt who saw cancer and <br />a generally difficult future headed her way <br />in the still water <br />of her brother's commode. <br />I think of voodoo in the bottoms of soup-cans, <br />and I want to tell the poet that the blues <br />is not my name, that Alabama <br />is something I cannot use <br />in my business. <br /> <br />He is so like my father, <br />I don't ask the Famous Black Poet, <br />afterwards, <br />to remove his shoes, <br />knowing the inexplicable black <br />and pink I will find there, a cut <br />gone wrong in five places. <br />I don't ask him to remove <br />his pants, since that too <br />is known, what has never known <br />a blade, all the spaces between, <br />where we differ ... <br /> <br />I have spent years tugging <br />between my legs, <br />and proved nothing, really. <br />I wake to the sheets I kicked aside, <br />and examine where they've failed to mend <br />their own creases, resembling some silken <br />obstruction, something pulled <br />from my father's chest, a bad heart, <br />a lung, <br /> <br />the lung of the Famous Black Poet <br />saying nothing I want to understand.<br /><br />Carl Phillips<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/passing/
