Felon Read online

  woman was not there. Two of us climbed out, rolled up sleeves,

  began pushing. Muscles strained against the darkness, the heft

  of the truck lurching, at best. When the scrawny kid joined,

  his body lost inside his coat, we thought ourselves blessed.

  A tampon run, he said, explaining why he was there, on this

  street so late at night, his girlfriend on the side of the road

  & my woman five hundred miles away, as if to say

  part of love is pretending to be a hero for strangers. The truck

  barely moved, the way love barely moves, when weighed

  down by memories. Before long there were four of us pushing,

  the thousand feet still a thousand feet. & then

  we stopped, which is to say we realized: the thing you want

  can break you. We all knew that in time our legs would shake,

  that our bodies would betray us & admit that the heart,

  though not useless, lacks the thing needed for some miracles.

  & yet, against this truth, I keep praying my woman,

  who is no more mine than any woman can belong to a man,

  but is her own, constellation of music & desire, as is anyone,

  will forgive history, knowing a thousand angels stand beside,

  exhausted, too, though certain the heft of their wings will bring

  a gale fierce enough to lift this hurt that we refuse to name.

  ESSAY ON REENTRY

  for Fats, Juvie & Star

  Fats ain’t never killed nobody,

  but has known more years in cells than cities,

  than school, than lovers, than his favorite

  cousin lived, more years than freedom.

  We met before M- ran his time up

  over a 5-inch black & white, before K- broke

  somebody’s jaw with the lock in the sock.

  Back when everyone thought they’d go home;

  before T- went home & was murdered; before

  J- went home & came back. He gives me

  the math on men I did my bid with: yesterday I sat

  at a table with Star, remember him? I was looking

  at his balding head and he was looking at the grays

  that cover my crown. I looked at Juvie at a near

  table both crown & beard stubble completely gray. . . .

  We first discovered jail cells decades ago,

  as teenagers & just today, a mirror reminded

  me of my disappeared self; androgenic alopecia:

  a word for our vanishing hair. Latin describing

  how time will cause everything to recede.

  No word exists for the years that we’ve lost

  . . .

  to prison. & I thought, Fats, describing a moment

  he’d shared with men he’s known for decades,

  was thinking about all that lost. But, he writes,

  looking at the landscape of gray that had become

  them, he realized it was far from over,

  because, all these rounds later, prison ain’t

  still undefeated, & one of these days we

  might find us some free.

  CONFESSION

  If I told her how often I thought

  Of prison she would walk out

  Of the door that’s led just as much

  To madness as any home we

  Desired, she would walk out & never

  Return; my employers would call

  Me a liar & fire me. My dreams are

  Not all nightmares, but this history

  Has turned my mind’s landscape into

  A gadroon. I do not sing. Have lied

  For so many months now that truth

  Harbingers lost. Sleeping beside her

  When a memory is holding me tight

  As she did before the lies turned

  Everything into a battle, I once

  Gasped & lurched & tried to

  Strangle the pillow she’d placed

  Beneath my head. Imagining me

  Explaining that to her, while still

  Shivering like a panicked & broken

  Man. I stopped believing in G-d

  Long before then, but that night,

  When outside there was no light

  But darkness, I swore something

  Of what inevitable is touched me.

  My children slept with their light on.

  I walked to their still-lit room. My

  Son was asleep & his brother draped

  Over his body as if he were the

  Pillow. The way he loved his brother

  Was everything my time in a cell denied

  Me. If I told my woman that, she

  Would want to know if I thought

  I deserved all that lost. Her mother

  Wonders why I won’t let it go & hold

  On to the happiness in this life we

  Have. But how do I explain that outside

  On nights like this, is where I first

  Learned just how violent I might be?

  That, I think of prison because in all

  These years I still can’t pronounce

  The name of my victim.

  IN MISSOURI

  HOUSE OF UNENDING

  1.

  The sinner’s bouquet, house of shredded & torn

  Dear John letters, upended grave of names, moon

  Black kiss of a pistol’s flat side, time blueborn

  & threaded into a curse, Lazarus of hustlers, the picayune

  Spinning into beatdowns; breath of a thief stilled

  By fluorescent lights, a system of 40 blocks,

  Empty vials, a hand full of purple cranesbills;

  Memories of crates suspended from stairs, tied in knots

  Around street lamps; the house of unending push-ups,

  Wheelbarrows & walking 20s; the daughters

  Chasing their fathers’ shadows, sons that upset

  The wind with their secrets, the paraphrase of fractured,

  Scarred wings flying through smoke; each wild hour

  Of lockdown, hunger time & the blackened flower.

  2.

  Of lockdown, hunger time & the blackened flower—

  Ain’t nothing worth knowing. Prison becomes home;

  The cell: a catacomb that cages and the metronome

  Tracking the years that eclipse you. History authors

  Your death, throws you into that din of lost hours.

  Your mother blames it all on your X chromosome,

  Blames it on something in the blood, a Styrofoam

  Cup filled with whisky leading you to court disfavor,

  . . .

  To become drunk on count-time & chow-call logic.

  There is no name for this thing that you’ve become:

  Convict, prisoner, inmate, lifer, yardbird, all fail.

  If you can’t be free, be a mystery. An amnesic.

  Anything. But avoid succumbing to the humdrum:

  Swallowing a bullet or even just choosing to inhale.

  3.

  Swallowing a bullet or even just choosing to inhale,

  Both mark you: pistol or the blunt to the head

  Escorting you through the night. Your Yale—

  An omen, the memories, the depression, the dead

  & how things keep getting in the way of things.

  When he asked you for the pistol, & you said no,

  The reluctance wasn’t about what violence brings.

  His weeping in your ear made you regret what you owed.

  On some days, the hard ones, you curse the phone,

  The people calling collect, reaching out, all buried,

  Surrounded by bricks. On some days, you’ve known

  You wouldn’t answer, the blinking numbers as varied

  As the names of the prisons holding on to those lives,

  Holding on, ensuring that nothing survives.

  4.
>
  Holding on, ensuring that nothing survives,

  Not even regret. That’s the thing that gets you,

  Holding on to memories like they’re your archives,

  Like they’re there to tell you something true

  . . .

  About what happened. My past put a skew

  On how I held her. Unaccustomed to touch,

  I knew only dream & fantasy. Try to see through

  That mire & find intimacy. It was just so much.

  & then, the yesterdays just become yesterday,

  A story that you tell yourself about not dying,

  Another thing, when it’s mentioned, to downplay.

  That’s what me & that woman did, trying

  To love each other. What kind of fool am I,

  Lost in what’s gone, reinventing myself with lies.

  5.

  Lost in what’s gone, reinventing myself with lies:

  I walk these streets, ruined by what I’d hide.

  Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine.

  I barely see my daughters at all these days.

  Out here caught up, lost in an old cliché.

  But tell me, what won’t these felonies betray.

  Did a stretch in prison to be released to a cell.

  Returned to a freedom penned by Orwell.

  My noon temptation is now the Metro’s third rail.

  In my wallet, I carry around my daguerrotype,

  A mugshot, no smiles, my name a tithe.

  What must I pay for being this stereotype?

  . . .

  The pistols I carried into the night, my anchor;

  The crimes that unraveled me, my banner.

  6.

  The crimes that unraveled me, my banner.

  Only a fool confesses to owning that fact.

  Honesty a sinkhole; the truth doomed to subtract

  Everything but prayer, turn my breath into failure.

  Whisky after prison made me crave amber,

  Brown washing my glass until I’m smacked.

  The murder of crows on my arm an artifact

  Of freedom: what outlasts even the jailor.

  Alas, there is no baptism for me tonight.

  No water to drown all these memories.

  The rooms in my head keep secrets that indict

  Me still; my chorus of unspoken larcenies.

  You carry that knowledge into your twilight,

  & live without regret for your guilty pleas.

  7.

  & live without regret for your guilty pleas—

  Shit. Mornings I rise twice: once for a count

  That will not come & later with the city’s

  Wild birds, who find freedom without counsel.

  I left prison with debts no honest man could pay.

  Walked out imagining I’d lapped my troubles,

  But a girl once said no to my unlistening ears, dismayed

  That I didn’t pause. Remorse can’t calm those evils.

  . . .

  I’ve lost myself in some kind of algebra

  That turns my life into an equation that zeroes

  Out, regardless of my efforts. Algophobia

  Means to fear pain. I still fear who knows

  All I’ve done. Why regret this thing I’ve worn?

  The sinner’s bouquet; house, shredded & torn.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  These lists get longer the older you are, and I’m tempted to just say for all of y’all. But there are people that have to be named.

  Thanks to the people who gave me fellowships that allowed me to work on this book: the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment of Arts, New America Foundation, Emerson Foundation. But also, to some specific fellowships developed and created to support work challenging our incarceration practices. I’m thinking about Agnes Gund and the Arts for Justice Fund. I still remember when Elizabeth Alexander had me come to the meeting where Aggie, Kat, Helena Huang, and Tanya Coke were all sitting around this table as I talked about what would become the Redaction Project, a portfolio of prints that I made with Titus Kaphar. So, thank y’all, there is a particular kind of vision needed to know that art can be influential and lead to change without being didactic. Thanks to Titus Kaphar. We turned some conversations about art and fatherhood into something wild and lyrical. Also, can’t forget the SOZE’s Right of Return. Or PEN’s Writing for Justice Fellowship. These fellowships weren’t ever really about the money, but about creating a community across discipline and conversation.

  And then, it’s always returning to my people. John Murillo, Randall Horton, and Marcus Jackson. (When the Symphony going back on tour?) Tyehimba Jess, who got secret stories of my NASCAR driving skills. Afaa Weaver, my old head. Marie Howe, who is always out there to listen to me. Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Nicole Sealey, Jericho Brown, Safiya Sinclair, Mitchell Jackson, and everyone else who came through and performed during the MoMA show. Part of all of that was me saying, y’all writing the work that pushes me. To Kiese Laymon, who heard a bunch of these joints when they were handwritten. Dude, the work you’re doing pushes and inspires me. To Mitchell Jackson—between, me, you, and Kiese we got a mean three-on-three squad. And messing around with Kathryn Belden, who also deserves a shout out here for digging the prose and the poetry, we might cause some real new memory in this art thing. I’m missing folks. Willie Perdomo, Greg Pardlo, A Van Jordan, and the rest of the Stairwell Crew. Brian Gilmore, Ernesto Mercer, DJ Renegade, and Toni Lightfoot. To Yao Glover. Man we go back farther than most of the folks I might name in a list like that, and the thing about it that matters is after I told you I’d served time in prison, you asked me if I wrote, if I was a poet. Ain’t much realer than that. To Asha French, ’cause sometimes your siblings don’t share your parents. And to Lori Gruen, who’s lived with these poems and my ramblings for quite some time now. I write these acknowledgments like this book might be my last. ’Cause you never know.

  To my dad, looking back, so many of these poems seem to be me saying something to you. May we figure out what that is before it’s all over.

  And of course, this gets written because Marcus, Tony, Cee, we all lived way too many of these stories. But we came through. And that right there is damn near enough.

  And to the immediate fam. Moms, all these poems exist ’cause you had me reading and thinking thinking mattered. Aunt Violet, you know, four-leaf clovers are the signature of my life and I owe you. And that me and your youngest son gave too much of our lives to prison, we owe you and my moms for that. May we repay that debt. I can name everyone. Grandma, Tricia, Darren, Tom, Pandora. Kim. Brian. Delonte. Nikki. Marquita. Pebbles. Aja. Josh. Mack. Zakiya. Jay. Who am I forgetting? Blame it on this deadline. Yes, we don’t always talk, but whatever these things are that I do with words started with trying to get a word in around y’all. And even in the silence I love y’all.

  And to Terese, Micah, and Miles. There is never enough of the joy and love and hope that you add onto my life in the poems I write, but I wouldn’t be able to write them if that joy wasn’t there.

  Finally. For Markeese Turnage, Christopher Tunstall, Terrell Kelly, Rojai Fentress, Kevin Williams, and Anthony Winn. I know y’all by names like Keese and Juvie and Star and Fats and Luke and Absolut. And y’all, with a rack of other dudes I only remember in dreams or when y’all remind me of them, all of the living that’s happening in those prison cells, all the desperation and the fight, these poems are born out of that. And may we all find us some freedom soon.

  Notes

  On the Redaction Poems

  Civil Rights Corps (https://www.civilrightscorps.org/) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to challenging systemic injustice in the American legal system. One of its central areas of advocacy and litigation has been the money bail system. Every night, there are 450,000 human beings awaiting trial in U.S. jail cells solely because they cannot make a payment. CRC challenges wealth-based detention and promotes anti-carceral alternatives to human cag
ing that are less restrictive, more effective, and grounded in holistic community engagement and empowerment. Their work has freed tens of thousands of people from jail cells, helped to elevate the issue of money bail into the popular consciousness, and is setting a precedent that will forever change the bail-setting process in the United States.

  Four poems in this collection, “In Alabama,” “In Houston,” “In California,” and “In Missouri” were redacted from legal documents that CRC filed to challenge the incarceration of people because they could not afford to pay bail. These poems use redaction, not as a tool to obfuscate, but as a technique that reveals the tragedy, drama, and injustice of a system that makes people simply a reflection of their bank accounts.

  On the Type

  The title pages, page numbers, and redacted poems are typeset in Redaction, a new font commissioned for the Redaction Project, a series of prints created by Dwayne in collaboration with the visual artist Titus Kaphar. Created by Forest Young and Jeremy Mickel, the Redaction font borrows from and transforms classic legal fonts into a statement about redaction and the role of the literal and figurative imagery of fonts to make meaning.

  Publication Acknowledgments

  Thanks to the many magazines and anthologies that have published versions of these poems: Poetry, Tin House, Kenyon Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, the Marshall Project, and the anthology America, We Call Your Name.

  I've always thought of my own writing as having something of the desire of the quilt maker. A book, filled with thousands of words, will sometimes have a few moments ¬– echoes of the work of others, homage to poems and poets that gave me voice and belief. Or, as my friend Patrick Rosal describes it, “this is a very Filipino practice of embedding something borrowed … grafted into what you are making as a way of praise, prayer, singing… [i]t’s all prayer to me, by which I mean a kind of devotion, discovery through attention.” I always recast the line, present it in a way that makes of it something new, situated in a way that add layers to the experience. Figuratively, it’s called an allusion; where I’m from, it’s just called a shout-out; the aim is for it to be recognized immediately, like seeing an old friend. When I say a Big verse I’m only bigging up my brother. This book is no different. And it is all prayer, the kind that sustained me when I had no name for g-d.