PARENTS POEM
When people ask how, I say
a fire took them.
And then they look at me like
I’m the most pitiful thing in the world.
So sometimes I just shrug and say
They just died, that’s all.
A fire took their bodies.
That’s all.
I can still feel their voices and hugs and laughing.
Sometimes.
Sometimes I can hear my daddy
calling my name.
Lonnie sometimes.
And sometimes Locomotion
come on over here a minute.
I want to show you something.
And then I see his big hands
holding something out to me.
It used to be the four of us.
At night we went to sleep.
In the morning we woke up and ate breakfast.
Daddy worked for Con Edison.
You ever saw him?
Climbing out of a manhole?
Yellow tape keeping the cars from coming
down the block.
An orange sign that said Men Working.
I still got his hat. It’s light blue
with CON EDISON in white letters.
Mama was a receptionist.
When you called the office where she worked,
she answered the phone like this
Graftman Paper Products, how may I help you?
It was her work voice.
And when you said something like
Ma, it’s me.
her voice went back to normal. To our mama’s voice
Hey Sugar. You behaving? Is the door locked?
That stupid fire couldn’t take all of them.
Nothing could do that.
Nothing.
SONNET POEM
Ms. Marcus says mostly sonnets are about love
I think about Mama and Daddy and my sister
how Mama and Daddy are somewhere up above
and Lili’s just far away enough for me to miss her.
Ms. Marcus says “sonnet” comes from “sonetto”
and that sonetto means little song or sound
It reminds me of that guy’s name—Gepetto
the one who made Pinocchio from wood he found
Ms. Marcus says you gotta write things a lot of times
before they come out sounding the right way
I know this poem’s not about love but at least it rhymes
Maybe I’ll get the sonnet thing right one day.
If I had one wish I’d be seven years old again
living on President Street, playing with my friends.
HOW I GOT MY NAME
Whenever that song came on that goes
Come on, baby, do the Locomotion, Mama
would make us dance with her.
We’d do this dance called the Locomotion
when we’d bend our elbows and move
our arms in circles at our sides.
Like our arms were train wheels.
I can see us doing it now—in slow motion.
Mama grinning and singing along
Saying all proud “My kids got rhythm!”
Sometimes Lili got behind me and we’d
do the Locomotion around our little living room. Till
the song ended.
And we fell out on the couch
Laughing. Mama would say
You see why I love that song so much, Lonnie?
See why I had to make it your name?
Lonnie Collins Motion, Mama would say.
Lo Co Motion
Yeah.
DESCRIBE SOMEBODY
Today in class Ms. Marcus said
Take out your poetry notebooks and describe somebody.
Think carefully, Ms. Marcus said.
You’re gonna read it to the class.
I wrote, Ms. Marcus is tall and a little bit skinny.
Then I put my pen in my mouth and stared down
at the words.
Then I crossed them out and wrote
Ms. Marcus’s hair is long and brown.
Shiny.
When she smiles it makes you feel all good inside.
I stopped writing and looked around the room.
Angel was staring out the window.
Eric and Lamont were having a pen fight.
They don’t care about poetry.
Stupid words, Eric says.
Lots and lots of stupid words.
Eric is tall and a little bit mean.
Lamont’s just regular.
Angel’s kinda chubby. He’s got light brown hair.
Sometimes we all hang out,
play a little ball or something. Angel’s real good
at science stuff. Once he made a volcano
for science fair and the stuff that came out of it
looked like real lava. Lamont can
draw superheroes real good. Eric—nobody
at school really knows this but
he can sing. Once, Miss Edna took me
to a different church than the one
we usually go to on Sunday.
I was surprised to see Eric up there
with a choir robe on. He gave me a mean look
like I’d better not
say nothing about him and his dark green robe with
gold around the neck.
After the preacher preached
Eric sang a song with nobody else in the choir singing.
Miss Edna started dabbing at her eyes
whispering Yes, Lord.
Eric’s voice was like something
that didn’t seem like it should belong
to Eric.
Seemed like it should be coming out of an angel.
Now I gotta write a whole new poem
’cause Eric would be real mad if I told the class
about his angel voice.
EPISTLE POEM
Hey Pops,
Today our teacher showed us this poem by this poet guy named Langston Hughes. It made me remember something. That long time ago when you read us that good-night poem about that guy who loved his friend. And it made me kinda think that maybe Langston Hughes is the same guy who wrote that one because his name sounded familiar. Underwater familiar—like I dreamed it sort of. I’m not gonna try to explain. I figure you understand. The only thing about what Ms. Marcus read was it wasn’t a poem poem. She said it’s called an epistle poem and it was a letter. I didn’t know a letter could be a kind of poem. So now I’m writing one to you to say that even though we can’t do stuff like go to the park on our bikes or eat hot dogs from that cart where the guy who always wore the Yankees cap yelled at me for being a Mets fan but gave us a discount if we bought four hot dogs—and we always did—and ate them standing there arguing with him. Even when the Mets lost again and again. I just wanted to say that even though we can’t do that kind of stuff no more, I haven’t forgot none of it. I’m gonna go see if I can find that poem about that guy loving his friend. I hope it’s by Langston Hughes.
—Love, Locomotion
ROOF POEM II
Up here the sky goes on and on like something
you could fall right up into.
And keep falling.
Fall so fast
and so far
and for so long you don’t
have to worry about where you’re gonna live next,
where you gonna be
if somebody all of a sudden
changes their mind about living with you.
Up here, you could
just let your mind take you
to all kinds of beautiful places
you never been before in real life
Tahiti, Puerto Rico, Spain,
Australia with all those kangaroos hopping around
and then you can come on back
and call the place you come back to
home.
ME, ERIC,
LAMONT & ANGEL
Once I saw a house fall down on a lady, Lamont says.
That ain’t nothing, Angel says. Once I saw this dog
get hit by a car. He went way up in the air and
when he came down again,
he got up and ran away. But he stopped at the corner,
Angel says.
And died.
Eric squints up his eyes.
Looks out over the school yard.
The sky’s real blue and no wind’s blowing.
I shake my head, trying to shake that dog out of it.
Once I saw a little boy, Eric says, all mysterious.
And then in my dream, he was a man.
We all look at him and don’t say nothing.
Far away, I hear some girls singing real slow and sad
Her mother, she went upstairs too.
Saying daughter oh daughter
what’s troubling you . . .
That ain’t no tragedy, Angel says, giving Eric a look.
More than what Lonnie seen, Eric says, grinning at me.
In my head I see a fire. I see black windows.
I hear people hollering. I smell smoke.
I hear a man’s voice saying I’m so sorry.
I hear myself screaming.
Never seen nothing, I say.
FAILING
I got a 39 on my math test
’cause
I don’t understand numbers
’cause
you say 1 + 1 = 2 and I go why? You say just
’cause
like just ’cause somebody said it means it’s the truth.
And since I don’t believe the things people say is
always the truth
’cause
sometimes people lie
it’s hard to understand math.
NEW BOY
New boy comes in our classroom today
Ms. Marcus says
Say good morning, Clyde, and the new boy says
Good mornin’, y’all
and the whole class falls out laughing
so hard, Ms. Marcus taps her pointer on the desk,
her face so mad it’s purple
R-e-s-p-e-c-t, she says
Respect! we repeat the way
she taught us to—a thousand times ago.
New boy’s looking down at the floor
looks real sad, says I’m sorry, ma’am
and the class tries hard not to laugh
but some laugh spills out of us anyway.
You’ve nothing to be sorry about, Ms. Marcus says.
Lamont whispers He should be sorry he’s so country
Eric says Look at his country clothes
New boy knows
they’re whispering about him,
puts one foot behind his leg
like he wants to crawl right inside himself.
He’s wearing high-water pants, light blue socks,
a white shirt
buttoned all the way up
tight around his neck
Check
Eric says
Check out his country hat
New boy’s holding the hat in his hands
Granddaddy hat in his hands the kind
with the black band going around gray felt
New boy looking like he wish he could
just melt right on outa the room.
DECEMBER 9TH
I wake up with my stomach all bunched, throw up
two times. Miss Edna gives me three Tums,
the spearmint ones
but the stomach pains don’t go away and I don’t want
breakfast.
Not cereal. Not oatmeal. Not even pancakes.
Miss Edna frowns, presses her hand to my forehead,
fixes
me a bed on the couch.
It’s December ninth, she says.
I don’t look at her, just go back into the bathroom
Nothing but bitter stuff comes up. And tears.
I hear Miss Edna calling her job saying she won’t
be coming in. I hear her say Dear Lord, remember me.
I hear her putting water on to boil
and smell the ginger she’s chopping up to make me
some tea.
It’s been four years, Miss Edna says to the Lord
How long will he carry this burden?
I see my old house on President Street
the window frames black from fire. Glass everywhere.
I hear people screaming and crying.
I see the firemen wearing oxygen masks and shaking
their heads.
It’s cold out. There’s water everywhere.
And two of Lili’s dolls—burnt and wet on the ground.
I hear Lili screaming for Mama
or maybe it’s me.
There’s relatives down south who don’t have room
for us. There’s church people who take us for a while
then pass
us on to more church people until there ain’t no more
church people
just group homes where people come sometimes to
bring us food and
toys and read us books they wrote. Then go on home
to their own families.
There used to be four of us
Mama, Daddy, Lili and me. At night we went to sleep.
In the morning we woke up and ate breakfast.
That was four years ago.
I lean my head over the toilet bowl
and more of the bitter stuff comes.
LIST POEM
Blue kicks—Pumas
Blue-and-white Mets shirt
Mets hat
A watch my daddy gave me
Black pants but not dressy—they got side pockets
Ten cornrows with zigzag parts like Sprewell’s
A gold chain with a cross on it from Mama—under
my shirt
White socks clean
One white undershirt clean
White underwear clean
A dollar seventy-five left pocket
Two black pens
A little notebook right pocket
All my teeth inside my mouth
One little bit crooked front one
Brown eyes
A little mole by my lip
Lotion on so I don’t look ashy
Three keys to Miss Edna’s house back pocket
Some words I wanted to remember
written on my right hand
Leftie
Lonnie
LATE SATURDAY AFTERNOON IN HALSEY STREET PARK
Shoot hoops with me, Dog
Eric says. Throws me the ball.
Where you been all day?
PIGEON
People all the time talking about how much they hate pigeons ’cause pigeons fly by and crap on their heads and then somebody always says That’s good luck! That’s good luck! so you don’t feel all stupid going through your pockets tryna find a tissue to wipe it off and you never find one ’cause you don’t be carrying tissues like an old lady so you gotta walk up to some old lady with that pigeon crap on your head and ask her for a tissue and she just goes Don’t worry, that’s good luck like everybody else and it makes you hate those sky roaches ’cause they’re everywhere in the city so you better duck if they fly over your head or else
But
This guy Todd that lives next door to Miss Edna’s building got a pigeon coop on his roof and sometimes I go up there and watch Todd waving this huge white sheet till all the pigeons come swooping and flying above us—back and forth and up and down making those croaky pigeon sounds. Those days I’m not scared about pigeon crap on my head because the way they fly—just slow back and forth and the sun getting all bright orange behind them and them making those sounds that after a while sound a little bit like a song—all of it together makes you look up into the sky and believe in everything you ever wanted to believe in. Especially with Todd s
tanding there waving that white sheet and his brown face all broken out in the biggest smile you ever seen on a teenager.
SOMETIMES POEM
Miss Edna gets her paycheck the second Friday
of every month and we go to C-Town. Sometimes
the Twinkies go on sale three for five dollars and
Miss Edna says
Get three. You know how we love ourselves some
Twinkies, Lonnie
And her smile gets big and so does mine.
We go up to the cash register with all our food.
When I put the Twinkies on the counter, the checkout
lady says
I guess your son likes Twinkies, huh?
And Miss Edna looks at me sideways.
Then she smiles and says
Yeah, I guess he does.
WAR POEM
Miss Edna got two other sons—Rodney and Jenkins.
Jenkins’s off fighting in the war.
Rodney, he lives upstate and once a month
Miss Edna goes up there and visits him. She packs up
fried chicken and potato salad and
makes a pound cake. Puts it all
in a shopping bag and the shopping bag smells
like lots of good things.
She leaves two chicken legs and some potato
salad on a plate for me when
I don’t
go with her but sometimes
I do
and we take a bus all the way up where there’s
mountains and grass everywhere.
Lots of trees too.