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  me & tyler jump into the pit head first even though four older boys

  The Crown Ain’t Worth Much

  The Crown Ain’t Worth Much

  Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib

  Button Poetry / Exploding Pinecone Press

  Minneapolis, Minnesota

  2016

  Copyright © 2016 by Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib

  Published by Button Poetry / Exploding Pinecone Press Minneapolis, MN 55403

  http://buttonpoetry.com

  All Rights Reserved

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  Cover Art: Max Sansing

  Cover Design: Nikki Clark

  ISBN 978-1-943735-04-4

  Ebook ISBN 978-1-943735-23-5

  For the mother who raised me. For the city that raised me when she no longer could.

  ON HUNGER

  And I say now what I have always known:

  a king is only named such after the blood of anyone who is not them pools at their feet and grows to be a child’s height before running down a hill, flecking the grass of a village crowded with quivering mothers and their boys, huddled underneath a new and undone black sky.

  There is not a way to rule without knowing where your family will get its next meal — rather, who it will be taken from, or who will become it. The dead, we know, do not hunger for anything but stillness. Perhaps a memory of them sung around a fire by those still living, their gold worn atop the head of the man who made a widow of their lover.

  Consider, though, the wild. The lion that fears nothing and falls into rest with a stomach fat as a second moon. If a lion walks with his head high through the open savanna, the bloody and

  detached leg of a hyena swaying from his jaws, he will not be hunted by any animal he cannot render immovable. Will not be attacked by any limbs that he cannot turn into

  an undone puzzle, spilled across a playroom floor. When there is no one waiting to dig your chest into a parched well, no army surging over the hills, what is a king but

  a heavy name, pulled over a heap of arrogant flesh? The pack of ravenous wolves pray only to the God of survival, its hand as impartial and fleeting as any other

  God we build and let carry us to all manner of war. Imagine if there was only one land. If the continents never shook themselves free of each other’s touch and still

  laid atop each other, the jungle rolling into the desert with no river to divide them. Imagine the pack of wolves running into dusk and setting upon the golden flesh

  of a lone lion, roaming the ground he rules. Each wolf climbing atop the other to find their taste. To pierce the neck, stake a set of teeth into a flailing paw until they

  have had their jaws lined with nourishment, leaving only a severed head, entrails stretching over the dry land. The wolves would move on, newly throned

  and full. Each with a blood prize falling from their mouths, darkness running over the new Earth. Every animal that watched, cheering a vicious king’s corpse in the high grass. The clouds may weep for this, wash away another dead thing.

  But I imagine all of this in a world where the wolves do not have to lose any of their own to be fed. Where the food they desire comes, trembling, to even their smallest

  children. Where they have a homeland.

  Don’t have to run into every untethered

  night howling into the emptiness.

  The old man rocks / on the porch and tells us / boys that the way to power is / displaying what you kill / letting a body rot in the stink / of summer’s blaze / meat cooked dark on / the steaming pavement / so that no one will dare hunt / you while you sleep / or / so a mother knows where / to collect whatever / is left of / her lineage and / push it under her tongue / until it swells / fat with grief / in the hood / everyone is driven to kill / by some kind of distinct / famine / a family pressed up / against each other’s exposed ribs / what a luxury it must be / to hand over death / for the sake of watching someone die / to not have to answer for the blood / you have spilled / until the gates of heaven ask / about the history of your palms / I don’t know how my people / navigated their land before / they were shook free from its touch / and thrown down in / a hot field with new / names and / new songs of survival to / fit into their bulging mouths / but I think of the nights / thick with the pounding of black / footsteps and the distant / howling of flames as / I watch the burning of another building / in a city soaked by / a death which fed / no one’s hunger / the fire rising to kiss the / black belly of a night sky / each star a set of / gleaming and eager / teeth

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  On Hunger

  I

  At My First Punk Show Ever, 1998

  In Defense of “Moist”

  When We Were 13, Jeff’s Father Left The Needle Down On A Journey Record Before Leaving The House One Morning And Never Coming Back

  September, Just East of the Johnson Park Courts

  All the Gang Bangers Forgot about the Drive-By

  Ode to Drake, Ending with Blood in a Field

  The Summer A Tribe Called Quest Broke Up

  1995. After the Streetlights Drink Whatever Darkness Is Left

  XVI

  Dispatches from the Black Barbershop, Tony’s Chair. 1996.

  I Don’t Remember the Whole Summer When “Do The Right Thing” Dropped

  Windsor Terrace, 1990

  Ain’t None of The Kids on My Block Gonna Debate about the Existence of God

  Ode to Kanye West in Two Parts, Ending in a Chain of Mothers Rising from the River

  All of the Black Boys Finally Stopped Packing Switchblades

  On Jukeboxes

  II

  The Year My Brother Stopped Listening to Hip-Hop

  Dudes, We Did Not Go Through the Hassle of Getting These Fake IDs for this Jukebox to Not Have Any Springsteen

  College Avenue, Halloween, 2002

  All the White Boys on the Eastside Loved Larry Bird

  The Scouting Report for the Only Black Boy on the Soccer Team

  Ode to Elliott Smith, Ending in the First Snowfall of 2003

  In Defense of that Winter Where I Listened to the First Taking Back Sunday Album Every Day Until the Snow Peeled Itself Back from the Grass and I Found My College Sweatshirt Again

  When I Say that Loving Me Is Kind of Like Being a Chicago Bulls Fan

  Club 185, Bexley, 2003

  Dispatches from the Black Barbershop, Tony’s Chair. 2003.

  Sheridan Avenue, 2002

  Saylor-Ackermann Hall, 2004

  I Mean Maybe None of Us Are Actually from Anywhere

  Ok, I’m Finally Ready to Say I’m Sorry for that One Summer

  Ode to Pete Wentz, Ending in Tyler’s Funeral

  On Melting

  III

  The Music or the Misery

  The Author Explains good kid, m.A.A.d. city to His White Friend While Driving Through Southeast Ohio

  Dispatches from the Black Barbershop, Tony’s Chair. 2011.

  At the House Party Where We Found Out Whitney Houston Was Dead

  The Ghost of the Author’s Mother Has a Conversation with His Fiancée about Highways

  My Wife Says that if You Live 20 Years

  XII

  My Wife Says that Everyone Our Age Right Now Is Listening

  The Ghost of the Author’s Mother Teaches His Wife How to Cook Fried Chicken


  My Wife Says that There Are So Many Songs

  Notes on Waiting for the Dog to Find the Perfect Place to Take a Shit While Morning Cuts Through the Sky, Fresh from Another Darkness

  The Author Writes the First Draft of His Wedding Vows

  On Sainthood

  IV

  I Do Not Call this “War”

  My Wife Says that It’s a Good Thing Humans Don’t Hold Fear

  Ode to Jay-Z, Ending in the Rattle of a Fiend’s Teeth

  While Watching the Convenience Store Burn in Baltimore, Poets on the Internet Argue over Another Article Declaring “Poetry Is Dead”

  USAvCuba

  After the Cameras Leave, in Three Parts

  Dispatches from the Black Barbershop, Tony’s Chair. 2015.

  The Crown Ain’t Worth Much

  The Story of The Last Punk Rock Show Before the City Tore Down Little Brother’s

  I was learning the importance of names — having them, making them — but at the same time I sensed the dangers. Recognition was followed by oblivion, a yawning maw whose victims disappeared without a trace.

  Josephine Baker

  The crown ain’t worth much if the nigga wearin’ it always gettin’ his shit took.

  Marlo Stanfield

  I.

  I’m from a place where the church is the flakiest / niggas is praying to god so long that they Atheist

  Jay-Z

  AT MY FIRST PUNK SHOW EVER, 1998

  me & tyler jump into the pit head first even though four older boys got patches that say NO BLACKS & NO QUEERS & I flinch & cover my head when the drum kicks too sharp & I don’t know what could be more black than that & tyler don’t know it but in an alley last month I saw him build a church in the mouth of a boy from ‘cross town who don’t talk to nobody & don’t come ‘round the hood unless he thirsty for a tithe but we up in the pit anyway ‘cuz it ain’t the 70s anymore what I mean is there ain’t a war always on television what I mean is we came here to see blood like all boys who sneak past their sleeping fathers & crawl out of windows before running into the night with ripped jeans & ain’t all blood the same when bodies get hurled like they in a cheap amusement park ride & some blond girl from bexley gets slick & tries to sneak into the rampage but not before tyler & some other boy grab her by the collar & toss her smooth out & then they high five & through the guitar bending over our heads like an umbrella I hear tyler whisper some things are just unacceptable & then he puts his head in his hands & his whole body begins to shake & I tell myself it can only be laughter

  IN DEFENSE OF “MOIST”

  Sprawling river / peeling off the chest / a wet slap / endless summer / not quite drenched to the bone / yet still a burden / how it sits heavy on the tongue / after being spoken / leaving the mouth / a humid storm / becoming the definition of itself / inside you / heaviness in the prison of your chest / I am trying to pull my shirt over my head / after a full court game / in June / and I am thinking of how everyone I love / was once taken from the inside of another person / moist with what carried them / into the world / isn’t that worth the smallest praise / I am closing my eyes / as the shirt’s cotton clings to my back / and I am thinking that all wetness must have teeth / especially the wetness that grows from within / and spills out / or / chews its way through the skin / and falls onto another’s skin / the night Michael Jackson died / everyone black / in Ohio / danced in a basement / until the walls were moist / until it rained indoors / and we saw our heroes / resurrected in the reflection / of our own drowning / I say moist / and do not first think about two naked bodies / the sound their skin might make / when they awkwardly press into each other / underneath a hungry sun / in an apartment with a broken air conditioner / I say moist / and first think of / the eager and swallowing mud / the bullet that burrowed into Sean’s chest / on Livingston Ave / the country of dark red / that grew across his white tee / while his mother held / his paling face / I say moist / as in / my homie’s blood left the corner of my block moist / or / his mama had her hands moist with what once kept her baby alive / or / my eyes were moist when I heard the o.g. say / “niggas gonna die every day” / and then he wiped blood off of his shoe / and it felt like summer for ten years

  WHEN WE WERE 13, JEFF’S FATHER LEFT THE NEEDLE DOWN ON A JOURNEY RECORD BEFORE LEAVING THE HOUSE ONE MORNING AND NEVER COMING BACK

  and this is why none of us sing along to “Don’t Stop Believin”’ when we are being driven by Jeff’s mom, four boys packed in the backseat tight like the tobacco in them cigarettes Jeff’s mom got riding

  shotgun with us around I-270 in a powder blue Ford Taurus where four years later Jeff will lose his virginity to a girl behind the East High School football field then later that night his keys and pants in the school pool so that he has to run

  home crying to his mother with an oversized shirt and no pants, like a cartoon bear, and the next day when I hear this story, I will think about what it means for someone to become naked two times in one night to rush into the warmth of two

  women, once becoming a man and once becoming a boy all over again but right now it is just us in this car with Jeff’s mother, that cigarette smoke dancing from her lips until it catches the breeze

  from the cracked front window and glides back towards us a vagabond, searching for a throat to move into and cripple while Neal Schon’s guitar rides out the speakers and I don’t know how many open windows a man has to climb out of in the middle of the night in order to have hands that can make anything scream like that.

  nothing knows the sound of abandonment like a highway does, not even God.

  in the 1980s, everyone wrote songs about someone leaving except for this one cuz it’s about how the morning explodes over two people in one bed who didn’t know each other the night before when alone

  was the only other option and their homes had too many mirrors for all that shit and so it is possible that this is the only song written in the 1980s about how fear turns into promise

  I think I know this because there is so much piano spilling

  all over our laps that we can’t help but to smile since we still black and know nothing can ransack sorrow like a piano.

  Jeff’s mother’s hand trembles and still wears a wedding ring so she pulls over to the side of the highway and turns the volume up so loud after the second guitar solo when the keys kick in again that we can barely hear the cocktail

  of laughter and crying consuming the front seat until the song fades away and the radio is low again and the ring once on Jeff’s mother’s hand is on the side of the highway beneath us, a sacrifice

  and so maybe this is why grandma said a piano can coax even the most vicious of ghosts out of a body.

  and so maybe this is why my father would stare at the empty spaces my mother once occupied, sit me down at a baby grand and whisper play me something, child.

  SEPTEMBER, JUST EAST OF THE JOHNSON PARK COURTS

  if the kicks on your feet are clean and sharp

  as the carved moon when a tall boy asks

  what size you wear, cuz? and bends

  to meet your face until the hunger in his eyes

  renders you a lighter shade of black

  stirs the sleeping crows from your skin

  and sends them howling

  into another brave and unshaken body

  you will walk home dragging your bare feet

  through a terrace of bottles that were full

  and unbroken when the men nodding off

  in their beach chairs and stained with the stink

  of desolation needed something to help them

  forget their waking hours as the sun heaved itself free this morning

  what was left of late summer’s

  stolen warmth spilling from its arms

  and you take the long way and walk slow

  because your father is waiting

  and knows what it is to grow up poor

  what it is to take something another man has earned


  he will carry you by your sweaty collar to the tall boy’s front yard

  and you will not leave with your shoes

  but you will leave a man

  the husk of your boyhood snapped under the weight

  of another’s fists beating the cries for a buried decaying

  mother from your tongue

  the heel of shoes that you claimed

  just an hour ago pressing into your neck

  while every father on the block gathers to watch

  another bloody bar mitzvah another destitute boy

  learning what it is to suffocate

  someone with their own gold

  ALL THE GANG BANGERS FORGOT ABOUT THE DRIVE-BY

  no one wants to see the block party broken up

  right when their jam cracks open and drips from the speakers

  but no one wants to bleed out during a hot and unforgiving summer either

  we all have to make sacrifices

  we all have to keep the dirt from underneath the fingernails of our mothers

  even if it means not getting to wrap our hands around the swaying waist

  of Britney from algebra class

  who has a forest of thick braids that stretch almost to her running legs

  nothing produces movement like the gun

  how two shots kissing the feet of an undressing sky

  can turn the dance floor into a thirsty mouth

  faster than the streetlights and the calls rising from the project windows

  It is what I know will always come once the heat moves in

  and ransacks the calm body of spring

  there is no song that can press its shoulder against this door