A FORTUNE FOR
YOUR DISASTER
POEMS BY HANIF
ABDURRAQIB
TIN HOUSE BOOKS / Portland, Oregon
CUTTER: I knew a sailor once, got tangled in the rigging. We pulled him out, but it took him five minutes to cough. He said it was like going home.
THE PRESTIGE
the poem begins not where the knife enters
but where the blade twists.
Some wounds cannot be hushed
no matter the way one writes of blood
& what reflection arrives in its pooling.
The poem begins with pain as a mirror
inside of which I adjust a tie the way my father taught me
before my first funeral & so the poem begins
with old grief again at my neck. On the radio,
a singer born in a place where children watch the sky
for bombs is trying to sell me on love
as something akin to war.
I have no lie to offer as treacherous as this one.
I was most like the bullet when I viewed the body as a door.
I’m past that now. No one will bury their kin
when desire becomes a fugitive
between us. There will be no folded flag
at the doorstep. A person only gets to be called a widow once,
and then they are simply lonely. The bluest period.
Gratitude, not for love itself, but for the way it can end
without a house on fire.
This is how I plan to leave next.
Unceremonious as birth in a country overrun
by the ungrateful living. The poem begins with a chain
of well-meaning liars walking one by one
off the earth’s edge. That’s who died
and made me king. Who died and made you.
If your hate could be turned into electricity, it would light up the whole world.
—NIKOLA TESLA
Never mistake what it is for what it looks like.
—TERRANCE HAYES
To The City I Left // To The City I Left // To The City That Took Me Back
CONTENTS
THE PRESTIGE
THE PLEDGE
IT IS ONCE AGAIN THE SUMMER OF MY DISCONTENT & THIS IS HOW WE DO IT
HOW CAN BLACK PEOPLE WRITE ABOUT FLOWERS AT A TIME LIKE THIS
WATCHING A FIGHT AT THE NEW HAVEN DOG PARK, FIRST TWO DOGS AND THEN THEIR OWNERS
THE GHOST OF MARVIN GAYE PLAYS THE DOZENS WITH THE POP CHARTS
WELCOME TO HEARTBREAK
I TEND TO THINK FORGIVENESS LOOKS THE WAY IT DOES IN THE MOVIES
HOW CAN BLACK PEOPLE WRITE ABOUT FLOWERS AT A TIME LIKE THIS
IT’S NOT LIKE NIKOLA TESLA KNEW ALL OF THOSE PEOPLE WERE GOING TO DIE
YOU ABOUT TO TELL HER YOU LOVE HER, WE OFF THAT
ONE SIDE OF AN INTERVIEW WITH THE GHOST OF MARVIN GAYE
WITH BOXES PILED AT THE FOOT OF THE STAIRS, I GO TO SEE LOGAN
HOW CAN BLACK PEOPLE WRITE ABOUT FLOWERS AT A TIME LIKE THIS
IT IS MAYBE TIME TO ADMIT THAT MICHAEL JORDAN DEFINITELY PUSHED OFF
GLAMOUR ON THE WEST STREETS / SILVER OVER EVERYTHING
THE GHOST OF MARVIN GAYE STANDS OVER HIS FATHER’S GRAVE AND FORGETS TO ASK FOR AN APOLOGY
AND JUST LIKE THAT, I PART WAYS WITH THE ONLY THING I WON IN THE DIVORCE
HOW CAN BLACK PEOPLE WRITE ABOUT FLOWERS AT A TIME LIKE THIS
THE OLD HEAD GIVES BAD ADVICE WHILE A MAN SITS WITH A GUN
THE TURN
I WOULD ASK YOU TO RECONSIDER THE IDEA THAT THINGS ARE AS BAD AS THEY’VE EVER BEEN
HOW CAN BLACK PEOPLE WRITE ABOUT FLOWERS AT A TIME LIKE THIS
FOR THE DOGS WHO BARKED AT ME ON THE SIDEWALKS IN CONNECTICUT
HOW CAN BLACK PEOPLE WRITE ABOUT FLOWERS AT A TIME LIKE THIS
NONE OF MY VICES ARE VIOLENT ENOUGH TO UNDO REMEMBERING
THE GHOST OF MARVIN GAYE SITS IN THE RUINS OF THE OLD LIVINGSTON FLEA MARKET AND CONSIDERS MONOGAMY
HOW CAN BLACK PEOPLE WRITE ABOUT FLOWERS AT A TIME LIKE THIS
I TEND TO THINK FORGIVENESS LOOKS THE WAY IT DOES IN THE MOVIES
IT’S NOT LIKE NIKOLA TESLA KNEW ALL OF THOSE PEOPLE WERE GOING TO DIE
HOW CAN BLACK PEOPLE WRITE ABOUT FLOWERS AT A TIME LIKE THIS
IF LIFE IS AS SHORT AS OUR ANCESTORS INSIST IT IS, WHY ISN’T EVERYTHING I WANT ALREADY AT MY FEET
THE GHOST OF MARVIN GAYE PUTS A SEASHELL TO HIS EAR AND HEARS A MOAN FROM THE LAST WOMAN HE LOVED
MAN IT’S SO HARD NOT TO ACT RECKLESS
HOW CAN BLACK PEOPLE WRITE ABOUT FLOWERS AT A TIME LIKE THIS
IT OCCURS TO ME THAT I AM LOVED MOST FOR THE THINGS I REFUSE
THE PRESTIGE
LIGHTS OUT TONIGHT, TROUBLE IN THE HEARTLAND
NO DIGGITY
THE GHOST OF MARVIN GAYE MISTAKES A RECORD STORE FOR A GRAVEYARD
NONE OF MY BLACK FRIENDS WANT TO LISTEN TO DON’T STOP BELIEVIN’
HOW CAN BLACK PEOPLE WRITE ABOUT FLOWERS AT A TIME LIKE THIS
IT’S NOT LIKE NIKOLA TESLA KNEW ALL OF THOSE PEOPLE WERE GOING TO DIE
WHAT A MIRACLE THAT OUR PARENTS HAD US WHEN THEY COULD HAVE GOTTEN A PUPPY INSTEAD
WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST AND THE CHILDREN FIRST AND THE CHILDREN
HOW CAN BLACK PEOPLE WRITE ABOUT FLOWERS AT A TIME LIKE THIS
THE GHOST OF MARVIN GAYE LEANS INTO A WALL OUTSIDE THE 7-ELEVEN AND TELLS YOU THE STORY OF HOW HE BROKE YOUR MAMA’S HEART REAL GOOD
IT IS AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT THING TO WALK INTO THE RIVER WITH STONES
HOW CAN BLACK PEOPLE WRITE ABOUT FLOWERS AT A TIME LIKE THIS
LOVE YOUR NIGGAS
A POEM IN WHICH I NAME THE BIRD
HOW CAN BLACK PEOPLE WRITE ABOUT FLOWERS AT A TIME LIKE THIS
THE GHOST OF MARVIN GAYE SITS INSIDE THE SHELL OF NIKOLA TESLA’S MACHINE AND BUILDS HIMSELF A PROPER COFFIN
THE PRESTIGE
Adjusting type size may change line breaks. Landscape mode may help to preserve line breaks.
THE PLEDGE
I want you so badly / but you could be anyone
—FLORENCE WELCH
IT IS ONCE AGAIN THE SUMMER OF MY DISCONTENT & THIS IS HOW WE DO IT
is creeping out of some open window same way it was in the summer of ’95 when my heartbreak was a different animal howling at the same clouds & the cops broke up the block party at franklin park right before the song hit the last verse because someone from the right hood locked eyes with someone from the wrong one & me & my boys ran into the corner store & tucked the chocolate bars into the humid caverns of our pants pockets & later licked the melted chocolate from its sterling wrappers in the woods behind mario’s crib with the girls we liked too much to want to know if they liked us back & there it was, the summer i learned to kiss the air & imagine it bending into a mouth & here it is again, the summer everything i love outside is melting & i tell my boys there is a reason songs from the ’90s are having a revival & it’s because the heart & tongue are the muscles with the most irresistible histories & i’m kind of buzzed. i’m kind of buzzing. i’m kind of a hive with no begging & hollow cavities. there is intimacy in the moment where the eyes of two enemies meet. there is a tenderness in knowing what desire ties you to a person, even if you have spent your dreaming hours cutting them a casket from the tree in their mother’s front yard. it is a blessing to know someone wants a funeral for you. a coming together of your people from their faraway corners to tell some story about your thefts & triumphs. all of your better selves shaking their heads over a table, chocolate staining their teeth. i suppose there is also intimacy in the moment when a lover becomes an enemy, though it is tougher to s
ay when it happens. probably when there is a song you can’t remember them living inside of anymore, even if both of you curled your lips around the words in a car at some impossible hour of morning, driving away from the place you met. i like my agony threaded together by the same chorus. not everything is Sisyphean. no one ever wants to imagine themselves as the boulder.
HOW CAN BLACK PEOPLE WRITE ABOUT FLOWERS AT A TIME LIKE THIS
dear reader, with our heels digging into the good
mud at a swamp’s edge, you might tell me something
about the dandelion head & how it is not a flower itself
but a plant made up of many small flowers at its crown
& lord knows I have been called by what I look like
more than I have been called by what I actually am &
I wish to return the favor for the purpose of this
exercise. which, too, is an attempt at fashioning
something pretty out of seeds refusing to make anything
worthwhile of their burial. size me up & skip whatever semantics arrive
to the tongue first. say: that boy he look like a hollowed-out grandfather
clock. he look like a million-dollar god with a two-cent
heaven. like all it takes is one kiss & before morning,
you could scatter his whole mind across a field.
WATCHING A FIGHT AT THE NEW HAVEN DOG PARK, FIRST TWO DOGS AND THEN THEIR OWNERS
The mailman still hands me bills like I should feel lucky to have my name on anything in this town & I been here 14 months & all I get is paper telling me who I owe & when I owe them & what might be taken from me if I don’t hand over the faces of dead men & I love the electric architecture of noise on the corner of Chapel & State where the old dudes who drown their afternoons in warm liquid build porches from neon glass & yell I see you boy at the Yale kids who walk by dressed in salmon-colored windbreakers regardless of whether the wind is present or asking to be broken & I, too, dress for the hell I want & not the hell that is most likely coming & at the fence outside the dog park my own dog pulls toward home & all of my dogs pull toward home & I am a leash sometimes & I send flowers to funerals from 3 states away now & I’m saying that which forces us to bare our teeth is all a matter of perspective & inside the dog park a game of fetch has gone awry & the dog that looks like a wheat field is circling the dog that looks like a melted ice cream cone & the wheat field is all teeth & the melted cone is a trembling mess & when the stakes are most violent I suppose we all become what we resemble most & what I mean is that the men on the corner are only drunks until the cops come & then they are scholars & I am from the kind of place where no one makes a fist if they aren’t going to throw the thing & when the wheat field lunges, the melted cone knows what’s what & sidesteps the glistening teeth with impeccable precision & I can’t believe that all of this is over a stick but I imagine that to a dog, a stick is an entire country & surely I’ve thrown hands in the name of less & the dogs have owners & the owners are chest to chest & yelling at each other about which dog started the fight that is a fight in name only, the wheat-field dog lunging & missing & lunging & missing & I feel guilty when I start to hope that the dog owners throw a punch at each other just so I can remember what it looks like when a fist determines its own destiny & I haven’t seen a real fight since Chris from Linden mopped up some kid from the suburbs back in ’02 outside of the Dairy Queen after the kid had one too many jokes about Chris’s pops catching 25 years on the back of some real shit & Chris knocked that boy out so fast he ain’t even get touched & we carried Chris home with his clean face & clean hands & so I really don’t have the time for all of the theater at this dog park & I am getting too old & I want only a good dog most days & I’m saying I want a dog that will never ask me to finish something it started & I’m saying I want a dog that will never make me clean its blood out of the streets.
THE GHOST OF MARVIN GAYE PLAYS THE DOZENS WITH THE POP CHARTS
your mouth so wide
it swallow a whole city in one bite
your mouth so wide
all the black people in Detroit don’t remember what they parents danced to
you think you so black
you paint the stars on your chest
you think you so black
you got a bed in everybody house
you take the last chicken leg
& leave meat on the bone
you think the tea
just got sweet from the sugar
you so ugly
the mirror trembled at your new
white face & then you walked
into the mirror
& then you became the mirror
& then you tore the skin from anyone who stood before you
& then there was a trader joe’s in the lot where we used to have the
block party & then everything you drank from became a whisper
your mouth so wide
when it opens I can see myself
crawling out starved and
thrashing against your tongue
an old suit hanging from my fragile
arms I have tried on all of your clothes & still nothing fits
but the blood.
everybody wanna make soul but don’t nobody wanna chew a hole through the night small enough for a bullet to pass through & pull each of their lovers into it.
everybody wanna make soul but don’t nobody wanna hemorrhage a whole family into sweat & white powder & so much sex that they will never speak of what killed you. your mama so full she a whole planet. your mama so black she everywhere but ain’t never on time. your mama so black she sang hound dog first & died with nothing to her name but the drink that carried her to the grave. your mama so black she my mama too. your mama saw the gun & let you bleed out & ran screaming into the sunlight. your mama so black she know when there ain’t nothing left worth saving. your mama so black she will come for you & know by your smell that you ain’t one of her own. your mama so black she will carry you in her teeth to the river & hold you down until you become either holy or dead.
WELCOME TO HEARTBREAK
it is the version of me fading in photos that I most wish to dance with. just once before the coughing black makes a ghost of him. no one asks me to smile these days & so here is my mouth, again a straight line. border between an ocean & thirst. I thumb the edges of the picture frame & consider the wood—what tree had to fall in order for this younger & smiling version of myself to have a home. It is the killing season again. All the flowers drag the crowns of their heads along the snow & die with a prayer of softer ground on their lips. I wish this type of betrayal on no one: being born out of that which will be your undoing.
Imagine, instead: the place where you have a bed of your own & a table to sit across from someone who laughs thick & echoing as an open palm at your smallest joy & then
the fingers close
I TEND TO THINK FORGIVENESS LOOKS THE WAY IT DOES IN THE MOVIES
like two white people kissing in the rain & it is always white people kissing in the rain on television
& it is a question of hair, I imagine. the things too precious to be given over to the illusion of
vulnerability. I have paid my tithes in this church, though. drawing my desires long through a city of
millions with wet sneakers & dying flowers exploding from tissue paper & I have emerged from this
shrinking heaven half-drowned & with a heart molding at the edges & speaking of the heart, I love
most what it is until it decides it isn’t. first a weapon & then not. first a morning, wherein you see
yourself briefly
whole & next to someone else who is briefly whole & then not. I am talking about the end of love—how
the door closes one night & never reopens. The coffee mug left with a lover’s unshakable stains in the
bottom & the single fork from the infant night in the first shared apartment & all of the relics we have
to craft
the leash used to keep our misery close. what I meant to say about kissing in the rain is that it
seems to be about a mercy that I cannot touch, for what the water has been known to undo & what of
myself I might see in the wake of its undoing. Mercy, like the boy pulling back a fist as the small stray
dog below him trembles with its eyes shut. Mercy, that boy then walking into the arms of his mother,
who once dragged him from a home ransacked by a man’s violence. Mercy, the city unfolding its wide
& generous palms over your skin the way a city does when it opens itself up & darkness to pour into
its open mouth & you, too, wait for the night to spill itself into your echoing terraces of grief & call you
outside & tell you that it is almost your season, darling. it is almost the season of your favorite flower &
the burial ground giving way to its tiny & exploding lips & how they exist for you & no one else
HOW CAN BLACK PEOPLE WRITE ABOUT FLOWERS AT A TIME LIKE THIS
i have been told that in any discussion of weather, a warning is more severe
than a watch. peep the two boys on the school yard making a halo of dead
grass, their hands in the shape an elder taught them to make when describing a scar
from another violent era. no one is about that real shit until they are. in xenia, the people were warned to
watch the skies & still stayed in the fields when the clouds locked arms & began their pirouette along the already barren landscape. that real shit ain’t about nothing until it is. after the tornado, only the witch
hazel survived. poking its tendrils up from the dirt. twisted fingers, cursing the sky. survive all manner of
cataclysm & find yourself in dark recesses, a salve for the wicked living of someone you do not know & are attached to nonetheless. between you & me, i was warned to watch the space where the fissure began & still, I filled my mouth with cake. enjoy the sweetness now, before it comes back to claim a space that you’d rather keep hidden. the difference between a warning & a threat is all a matter of what you’ve lived through. watch the fist sew shut the eye of a boy who was warned about talking slick. watch the thin