The Crown Ain't Worth Much Read online

  III. What Is Left Of “Sinnerman”, After The Fire

  Oh,

  sinner

  run

  sinner run

  run

  Don’t you see

  this

  bleedin’ river

  Don’t you see the devil

  waitin’

  DISPATCHES FROM THE BLACK BARBERSHOP, TONY’S CHAIR. 2015.

  and I got to walk my ass past my mamas old house now and see a for sale sign they put one of them out front here but I tore that shit out the ground the city still gonna get they money though we gotta be out by tomorrow night damn nigga you might be my last cut they done took all ‘cept this chair and these blades same ones I been using since ’89 they still sound the same they still cut clean but they loud they sound like a bulldozer comin these blades been watchin all that black hair fall since we got here these blades been watchin all those black buildings fall since we got here niggas ain’t got nowhere to go except under the ground my son got locked up fuckin with those packs trynna make money for the family we ain’t been eatin ever since they built that salon for the white folks next door we ain’t been eatin ever since the white families moved in and couldn’t pronounce my son’s name niggas hungry everything for sale out here everything got a price they gonna turn my mamas old house into a shoe store they gonna turn my mamas old house into a bakery they gonna bake shit that we can’t even afford I’m gonna walk by and smell my mamas pies coming off the brick my stomach been eating itself for so long my stomach the only thing full on my whole body my girl been crying since our son got locked up my girl been crying so long we got a river in our backyard my nigga said that shit might take us to the promised land like I know what that shit mean like the promised land ain’t courtright and livingston I ain’t leavin my home nigga they gonna have to drag me through the streets they gonna have to pull me right off the porch I ain’t goin out like I’m soft my daddy built that house my daddy built this hood my daddy got his hands all over this white shit and they don’t even know it my son be sending letters from jail my son gotta come home to the same bedroom he grew up in I ain’t leavin unless I bleed out right where they killed big mike you remember that nigga his moms live out west now they gettin all of us outta here swear to god swear to god I’mma be buried right here though nigga I’mma be buried right underneath another starbucks or some shit and I’mma be a ghost I’mma keep the hood safe after I die the o.g.’s ain’t save us but shit my name still on the door for one more night nigga let me give you a cut ‘fore you head back

  THE STORY OF THE LAST PUNK ROCK SHOW BEFORE THE CITY TORE DOWN LITTLE BROTHER’S

  Gets longer every time I tell it. It can stretch itself across a table for hours, depending on what diner the table is inside of, or the pooled money that can be thrown across the table’s smooth face, or how much change we have left to romance the jukebox into playing something by someone who is no longer living. In this version, I tell you what you most want to hear: the sky lets a shower of fractured light leak through its teeth and fall onto our arms, still damp with the glitter that a guitarist threw from the front of the stage. In this version we are not swollen fat with grief. We did not stand in the storm on high street for two whole days and wish to drown. We moved because we could. The bitter rain did not split whatever youth we had left. In this version, there are no buildings high enough for a body to fall from and become a memory, a boundless winter grown ripe in a mother’s bones. In this version, I tell you that it was always just music. I do not use words like “holy”, or “church. I speak plain about the split lip. I speak of how the salt from a French fry stolen off of a pretty girl’s plate fell into this canyon of blood and I still did not wince. I tell you that I sat in a cold shower at 3 a.m., washed the sweat off of my back with a hard bar of soap and prayed for no memory of this in the morning. I made room on my skin for the grief to sit, and nothing more. I name the wounds but do not discuss how they arrived. In this version, Everyone we love is still alive. In this version, I say alive and do not mean I touched the face of my friend in a dream. I say alive and mean someone was there to pull me by the shirt when the boy’s elbow glanced my face, and I did not fight until I wept, calling out a dead boy’s name with each swing of a reckless fist. I say alive and a sheet of ice appears in my bedroom. Once, the way we knew summer was over was when the fireflies stopped dancing around our heads, when the cicadas carried their songs south and left us to our unforgiving cold and we went to shows with no coats on, shivering together in a packed line. Every winter, I visit a new grave. Eventually, Ohio will run out of ground. And then what of the bodies? What land has arms large enough to hold us all after we are gone, but still full of so much promise? In this version, we hid packs of cigarettes from our friends and stopped buying lighters. In this version, we still believe that drinking in smoke is the only thing that will kill us. In this version, a boy sprays punk will never die onto the brick wall outside and I do not tell him that I know death. I do not tell him that I have crawled into that hollow mouth and exited through the other side. I do not tell him that death is not when a city makes a strip mall out of where you bled once. That is the other death. The one that wears your name, but does not ask you to wear its own. The nostalgia is killing me again. In this version, I say killing and know that I will come back, still breathing, to my father. A remembered voice, a siren song of disappointment and still forgiveness. I say killing and I pull a long black feather from where the word grew underneath my tongue. It falls to the floor and becomes a torn jacket. In this version, I do not speak the name of the boy who wore the jacket across his breathless chest while he was carried, six of us on each side of a wooden box. Forgive me father, for I have made a suit of all these names I refuse to speak, and gone dancing in it. I have let all of me soak through it until it is a dark mess, falling from my shoulders. I keep handfuls of lighters only to press them into the blooming darkness when August makes another slow and hot exit. The seasons I remember most are the ones I never want to come again. And isn’t this how each story starts? With a list of things we know we cannot take back? And, still. Everything has an end. This is where I tell you what I most want to hear myself: none of it was real. I am still sitting in a diner on the Eastside of Columbus and it has felt like summer for ten whole years. There is still a living mother, hovering over a sewing machine in the home I can always come back to. My name is still scrawled on the bathroom wall of a dive bar. The dive bar is still a dive bar. I am a forest of beginnings. I am never alone. I do not bury. I do not funeral. I can still look into mirrors. I do not see a chorus of ghosts. I do not cover my bedroom walls in posters of old punk bands to keep the ghosts out. I am at a diner and the table is full. No one is covered in dirt. The jukebox is still hungry for the silver that lines our pockets. Kurt Cobain is still singing I’m so happy / ‘cause today / I’ve found my friends…

  In this version, we are laughing loud enough to drown out the next line. Kurt sings

  They’re in my head

  And I pretend not to feel winter moving in.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Of course, my family: My father, my siblings. Laura, my loving and patient partner. This collection would not be possible without all of your intersections in my life.

  Everyone at Button Poetry/Exploding Pinecone Press: Michael, Dylan, Sam, Anna, and the whole team. Thank you so much for believing in this project, even when I had no idea what I was doing.

  My closest friends, who have gently and generously seen me through the entire life reflected in these poems: David, Meaghan, Ethan, Stephanie, Sam. You all are my people. Always.

  The Columbus poetry community, and all of the poets within: Scott Woods, William Evans, Rose Smith, Steve Abbott, Rachel Wiley, Stephanee Killen, Vernell Bristow, Louise Robertson, Kidd, J.G., Ed Plunkett, Karen Scott, Alex Scott, Matthias Jackson, Joe Atticus Inch, Jordan McFall, Meg Freado, M. Shaw, Dave Nichols, Spike Cowell, Betsy Clark, Zach Hannah, Brandon Crittenden, Alexis Mitchell, Fayce H
ammond, Aaron Alsop, Joy Sullivan, Madison Gibbs, Kim Brazwell, Jason Brazwell, Bill Hurley, Paula Lambert, Barb Fant, Izetta Thomas, Sidney Jones Jr, Kim Leddy, the Mosaic Students, Xavier Smith, Alex Caplinger, Quartez Harris, Hannah Stephenson, Maggie Smith, Is Said, Never Let Your Pen Dry, With Poetry, Writing Wrongs, Writer’s Block, The Poetry Forum, The Ness, Paging Columbus, and Pen and Palette Always. Thank you all for providing the time, space, energy and work into this brilliant community that has forever kept me fed. Please keep the future of it strong.

  The cohort of poets who push me to be better a better writer, and challenge me to be a better person: Danez Smith, Sarah Kay, Fatimah Asghar, Clint Smith, Eve Ewing, Nate Marshall, Franny Choi, Muggs Fogarty, Chrysanthemum Tran, Vatic, Emily O’Neill, Megan Falley, Jacob Rakovan, Cam Awkward-Rich, Hieu Nguyen, Aaron Samuels, Jayson Smith, José Olivarez aka Papi Two Times, Aziza Barnes, Adam Falkner, Mahogany Browne, Olivia Gatwood, Khadijah Queen, Javon Johnson, Jericho Brown, Kyle Dargan, Joshua Bennett, Angel Nafis, Rachel McKibbens, Sabrina Benaim, David Winter, Raena Shirali, Paige Quiñones, Morgan Parker, Sam Sax, Julian Randall, Jacqui Germain, Phil Kaye, Ariana Brown, Sasha Banks, Omar Holmon, Shira Erlichman, Yasmin Belkhyr, Danniel, Schoonebeek, Nabila Lovelace, Jay Deshpande, Robbie Q, Jon Sands, Sam Rush, Chace Morris, Cassandra de Alba, Sophia Holtz, Zeke Russell, Charlotte Abotsi, Simone Beaubien, Jessica Rizkallah, Porsha O., Janae Johnson, Meaghan Ford, Tatyana Brown, Jeanann Verlee, Miles Walser, Safia Elhillo, Camille Rankine, Phillip B. Williams, Jerriod Avant, Mark Cugini, Paul Tran, Casey Rochetau, Anis Mojgani, Sam Mercer, McKendy Fils-Aime, Khary Jackson, Jamaal May, Geoff Kagan Trenchard, Desiree Dallagiacomo, Jonathan Mendoza, Siaara Freeman, Kieran Collier, Allison Truj, Anthony Ragler, Nicole Homer, Adam Levin, Melissa Lozada-Oliva, Derrick Carr, Sara Brickman, Gabriel Ramirez, Andrew Yim, Deonte Osayande, Sam Gordon, Justin Phillip Reed, Marty McConnell, Ocean Vuong, Desiree Bailey, Adam Hamze, Roger Reeves, Alex Dang, Dark Noise, Divine Fabrics, Darkmatter, Other Black Girl Collective, and so many more. Thank you all for lighting the path.

  Stevie Edwards and everyone at Muzzle Magazine: Thank you so much for allowing me to work with you all. I have become such a better reader and writer due to my time with you all.

  Places that have given me the space and time to do this work: Hurston-Wright, with special thanks to Terrance Hayes, Callaloo, Thurber House, and Columbus Arts Festival.

  This book is dedicated to the memory. The memory of any moment you have loved or been in love, and the people who lived in that moment with you. For my mother, for the changing city I once knew and the one I love still, for Tyler, for Mike, for the barber shop, for Gina Blaurock, for MarShawn McCarrel. For anyone you miss.

  Thank you for sharing this brief and fantastic life with me.

  Thank you to the following journals who first gave versions of these poems a home:

  Drunk in a Midnight Choir: “Ode to Pete Wentz, Ending in Tyler’s Funeral,” and “Ode to Drake, Ending With Blood in a Field”

  Electric Cereal: “The Author Writes the First Draft of His Wedding Vows,” and “At My First Punk Rock Show Ever”

  Freezeray: “At the House Party Where We Found Out Whitney Houston Was Dead”

  The Journal:“Ode to Kanye West, Ending in a Chain of Mothers Rising From The River,” and “XVI”

  Muzzle: “The Summer a Tribe Called Quest Broke Up”

  The Offing: “On Hunger,” and “I Don’t Remember the Whole Summer When Do the Right Thing Dropped”

  PEN American: “After The Cameras Leave, In Three Parts”

  Sidekick Lit: “Dispatches from the Black Barbershop, Tony’s Chair (2011)”

  THIS: “On Melting,” “Okay, I’m Finally Ready to Say I’m Sorry For That One Summer,” and “Windsor Terrace, 1990”

  Vinyl: “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 “The Author Explains good kid, m.A.A.d. City to His White Friend While Driving Through Southeast Ohio”

  Western Beefs: “USVvCuba,” “Dispatches from the Black Barbershop, Tony’s Chair (1996),” “The Music or The Misery,” and “In Defense of Moist”

  Winter Tangerine Review: “1995. After The Streetlights Drink Whatever Darkness is Left,” “Ode To Jay-Z Ending in the Rattle of a Fiend’s Teeth,” “All of the Black Boys Finally Stopped Packing Switchblades,” and “My Wife Says It’s A Good Thing Humans Don’t Hold Fear”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib is a poet and writer from the east side of Columbus, Ohio. He is a Callaloo Creative Writing fellow, and a columnist for MTV News. This is his first full-length collection of poems.

  OTHER BOOKS BY BUTTON POETRY

  If you enjoyed this book, please consider checking out some of our others, below. Readers like you allow us to keep broadcasting and publishing. Thank you!

  Aziza Barnes, me Aunt Jemima and the nailgun.

  J. Scott Brownlee, Highway or Belief

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  Sam Sax, A Guide to Undressing Your Monsters

  Mahogany L. Browne, smudge

  Neil Hilborn, Our Numbered Days

  Sierra DeMulder, We Slept Here

  Danez Smith, black movie

  Cameron Awkward-Rich, Transit

  Jacqui Germain, When the Ghosts Come Ashore

  Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib, The Crown Ain’t Worth Much

  Aaron Coleman, St. Trigger

  Olivia Gatwood, New American Best Friend

  Available at buttonpoetry.com/shop and more!