The Sobbing School

by Joshua Bennett; Selected by Eugene Gloria

  forefront of family fight, why Ma sling Pop

  side-eye over supper five nights out of seven

  on a good week. I put the pest in pestilence.

  The silence too. My nondescript haunting

  be quiet as a fist & damn near immortal.

  & ain’t that some kind of perverse

  irony: our ubiquity in this

  crumbling kitchenette,

  the sheer pluck

  of indestructible

  vermin eons older

  than the human

  eye, its irrelevant

  contempt?

  ON STUPIDITY

  In the first instance, we might say the word stupid is a tiger the black child does or does not outrun from birth. The data bears this out, though we can linger with the following image if we want our claim to be death-proof: by the time Ms. Hollinger told my father I would never function in a classroom, I held as many years as a handgun’s worth of ammo in my body. The term function is of singular import here. Not only as an allusion to the mechanical—which is to say, grade school as the Industrial Revolution’s unclaimed offspring—but also its broader implications for the social field: the function as a math problem involving one, two, as many unknowns as you can fit into a fist. Still, it was clear that I was not what most would call stupid, though there was certainly something stupid-esque about my refusal of Ms. Hollinger’s most basic orders: coloring when it was time for naps, my index finger sketching narwhals onto the air as she droned over ABC’s: “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; but I am not so certain about the universe.” That’s Einstein. Seriously. Which leads me to believe that what Ms. Hollinger intended was not as vile or violent as it first seemed. Perhaps what she meant to say was not so apocalyptic at all, but her attempt at gluing language to the ineffable, not unlike how we give human names to tropical storms, or look at the stars and say the word stars, like our mouths are big enough to capture all of the light at once.

  FIRST DATE

  I take my cue from the blizzard

  making a name for itself outside

  the café window: give myself away

  in shards. First, each hour spent

  on the threshing floor, so hungry

  for the force of the Lord

  there were days I dared not move, poring

  over ancient law until the walls bled.

  Then, the flashing image of Princeton

  in 1856, every slave a young man brings

  to campus dressed in black, an extra pair

  of hands to mend the trousers, or brush

  his hair before bed. Then my father scaling

  the side of our house with no ladder, too poor

  to call the locksmith. Then the blond man

  on the A train last month, his broken nose turning

  each fist into a bolt of red silk. Then my father again,

  but smaller this time. This time no one pities him.

  He is prettier than everyone else on the elevator.

  My mother still jokes about catching him catching

  himself in the switchboard’s reflection, as if an Afroed

  Narcissus seconds before the fall, all thirty-two teeth

  shining bright as Lucifer’s waistcoat.

  VARIATION ON THE FATHER AS NARCISSUS1

  FRESH

  I wasn’t being fresh when I told

  my father his word was good

  as fish grease in a heatless house

  as far as Mama or I was concerned.

  So I don’t know what cut him clean,

  what tensed each arm

  or gave his precious temper

  flight. I never say the right

  thing. All my rebuttals land

  awkwardly, as if

  they started dying

  on the way down.

  Back in his day Pop was the freshest dude this side of the BK Bridge, & the runner-up wasn’t close enough to make out the color of his socks, you dig? He used to rock these three-piece polyester suits that made him look like a redwood come alive just to stunt. Story goes, Mama saw him in a club downtown & his rendition of the hustle was so smooth she got stuck in his glow for like a whole minute before the bridge of the song gave her body back to itself. Or maybe it was the other way. Maybe Mama was both the dance floor & the light that called it forth. Maybe Pop never danced, but was so lovely Mama released her hold on the room for like three or four whole minutes, just to show the charmer how to move as if the heat was its own currency: the kind of danger you could pay rent with.

  The freshest memory I have

  of my father takes place

  in an IHOP in Washington

  Heights & he is eating eggs,

  describing my diction

  as if it were on display,

  floating in a bulletproof box:

  The way all those words

  come out of your head, man.

  It’s amazing. It’s like a book

  or something.

  THE ORDER OF THINGS

  The boxing gym was across the street.

  Its blue floor was soft and dull.

  The coach was kind enough.

  His name was Ralph. His shirt was clean

  and nonspecific, the inverse of my moth-worn

  Syracuse lacrosse sweatshirt.

  The first class would be free.

  The gym was across the street.

  From my apartment, I mean.

  The five-floor walk-up full of art

  students and great-aunts

  with names that ring like elegies.

  I live next door to a Planet

  Fitness full of shiny people.

  My arms are smooth as shellfish.

  There is no time like the present to pray

  for difference. This is how the hunted persist.

  ◆

  Christina and her friends threw me

  up against the fence, held me

  like a portrait in a museum boasting

  free admission for students under the age

  of ten. The chain-link made latticework

  of my unremarkable back. Thankfully,

  no archaeological evidence of this

  remains. When I fell to the ground,

  the other children circled me like a plague.

  Humor was no reliable salvation:

  Eight on one can’t be that much fun for any of us,

  am I right? The jury returned in a flash,

  a unanimous decision to shake up the show

  -off. From the blue floor of our newly

  renovated playground, Ian’s face

  was all I could recognize. I charged

  at him like a mother walrus darting

  through the deep. Ian fell as a tooth

  might, his space in the phalanx

  suddenly filled only by my supple ghost.

  ◆

  My dad could beat up anybody

  else’s dad. I knew this largely through folklore

  he spun from the day of my birth

  until first signs that his jet-black

  curls would soon settle into winter.

  In my unkempt head, the transition

  from Jim Crow to Vietnam was clean

  as blood could ever be, two battlefields

  branding him iconic, unkillable.

  He chased Tamara’s ex-boyfriend

  through an entire apartment complex

  with no break for breath or drink. Punched a hole

  in a wall after a parent-teacher conference

  ended with the indictment of his favorite son.

  His third second chance. The youngest one.

  The loyal prodi
gy, destined never to crystallize

  into proper mirror, never master the alchemy

  of knuckle blooming into broken nose,

  jaw left hanging like a half pendulum,

  red asymmetry shaming a stranger’s face.

  ODE TO THE EQUIPMENT MANAGER

  In a sense, you are the valve

  through which the game’s hard

  beauty finds its most fitting

  point of egress. You who turn fist

  swing & broken limbs into box scores,

  boost a benchwarmer’s prayer

  with every figure you sketch

  in that green book you keep, always,

  flush to your chest, as if a secret

  weakness or tale of a simpler time

  long since gone rogue. Let popular culture

  have its jokes, its jockstraps & sweaty socks

  thrown like gossip across the locker room, the business

  end landing squarely on your face each time.

  What do they know of the math you bend

  to make scholarships materialize, the scores

  of glistening boys you daily break free?

  It is a kind of love, I think, your tireless glare

  trailing every shot, the waltz of iron

  & wood you give back to the page, all those

  small, black gifts exploding into song.

  FAMILY REUNION

  for Tariq

  The question quarantines.

  My cousin’s usual talk

  of anime & first apartments

  & Kiana Thomas’s flawless

  hips has long ceased, faded

  like ghost kisses into the tepid

  night. I try & fail at least four times

  to make this into a conversation

  about wonder, do my best

  to make the doubt sound pretty:

  But who did Jesus think he was,

  exemplar or experimentalist?

  I watch the chariot wheels

  spinning in his eyes turn over & over.

  This is the longest we have spoken

  in ten years, the sword now so deep

  I could not retrieve it without killing us both.

  PRAISE HOUSE

  It all started with the Hammond B-3

  electric organ I saw at the thrift store

  on 234th Street around two in the afternoon,

  while everyone else was in a seminar

  on Hegel, feigning agreement.

  I captured the image of the holy

  device on my new phone, sent it off

  to all my fellow former saints.

  Within minutes, we had a space

  and a plan. Our agnostic church

  would meet in my apartment every

  other week, just the three of us

  on beanbags and half-broken

  chairs, belting the hymns our mothers

  sewed into our hands.

  For a name, Jamall suggests First

  Humanist Church of Washington Heights,

  but Jeremy finds that rather dull

  & I don’t disagree strongly enough,

  so we toss out a few more, most

  involving Brooks, Baraka, Hughes,

  three or four other poets who called God

  lonely—not as insult, but as

  a critique of perfection, a guess

  at what sovereignty does

  to one’s social life—before

  settling on Praise House,

  a unanimous choice once

  I pulled up the photo of a man

  old enough to have lived

  when it was illegal to do

  what we do for a living now,

  his arms akimbo, standing

  in front of an oat-white lean-to,

  the name of our new sanctuary

  typeset across the side.

  Though I do not know if this building bore

  any relation to what our parents

  would call sacred, if those living

  at the borders of this black

  & white still did anything more

  than walk into a splintering box

  and cry the hours into their hands,

  I can say, without certainty

  or shame, that we have come

  here with no aim higher than that

  kind of blood & saltwater prayer.

  As all those who went before,

  we know God is an event,

  that the spirit will not fall

  if the music ain’t right. Thus,

  gathered in the name of what

  gathers us, we lose our selves

  in spite of our dialectical

  minds, invite the groove

  to take us in, take us

  higher, alight.

  VCR&B

  All my favorite singers sound like modems.

  I intend this to be read as a loving observation

  the same way an aging mechanic lifts the engine

  from the torso of his Cutlass Supreme

  & sends it off to become someone else’s future.

  Which is to say, coolly, I know what time it is.

  All my favorite singers sample dead legends

  & let the spirit speak in HD:

  Heathen’s Desire, Holy Diffraction—

  the only difference worth noting

  is whether you want your body

  to be something it is not or someplace

  it has never been when the synth-laden outro

  begins. Whether you do or do not believe

  that freaky cyborgs are indeed among us

  when the bass kicks you upside the knees

  like a little brother testing his legs, his luck,

  your love. All my favorite singers tend to refrain

  from using terms like love unironically,

  which could be read as a way of distancing

  what we came here for or what we built

  this petulant hunger from. Zapp & Roger

  hum compuuuter luuuuuuv & I don’t

  imagine another person on the end

  of another screen, blowing emoji kisses at me

  from across the distance, but a glowing Xbox

  One, my first iPhone, this smooth black alphabet

  full of wires & light, lying to my escapist

  heart, daring this flesh to be its own

  system of stars & gas giants, unfurling

  into the slick ether like cellophane, like everywhere

  & nowhere I have ever wanted to be.

  IN DEFENSE OF DMX

  No one knows Ella Fitzgerald

  was raised in Yonkers,

  which probably makes you

  the most famous person

  to ever hail from Yonkers & most days

  I’m pretty cool with this gap in the archive

  if only because of that part in the Grand Champ intro

  where your homeboy says, Fact of the matter is, I trust dogs

  more than I trust humans & I feel pretty

  much the same way only

  you should switch out dogs

  for written agreements

  or Apple products in my case.

  I love how you love the ostensible

  subhuman. How you praise even

  the unworthy muse. How even

  your prayers sound like fighting, which

  reminds me of my mother & her Bapticostal

  ilk, the way they would bless the air

  when kin grew sick or shut in, every line

  of holy petition invisible & yet swinging,


  this knot of bodies locked to Mama’s tone.

  You are churchy too, but in a dangerous way

  & I respect that. Such multiplicity is no doubt born

  of your nameless hometown & no friends to speak

  about such things with, the lack of empathy for boys

  from yet-unpopular wars. When strangers ask

  where I’m from, I either lie (some nonsense

  about a BX birthright by maternal bloodline)

  or invoke your name to laminate my hood credentials.

  It never works as intended,

  but I don’t blame you.

  Our voices occupy different spaces

  on the Trust, You Don’t Want No Problems

  spectrum, & I usually follow up any claim

  to our home, our beloved, mutual shame

  by mentioning the Ovidian qualities

  of your more recent work & you know

  how it is, Earl. You know nothing beautiful

  comes from where we come from.

  So when I talk about you like that,

  I think it confuses people.

  ODE TO THE MASCOT

  Older even than sport itself is this sex

  of soul & pelt, this leap & sway to set

  a crowd aflame. By all means, play

  on, fanciful false animal snout

  slick with fang & teenage gall,

  strut till the fur feels like a spare

  body you could claim as chain

  mail, as buffer, as college essay

  fodder par excellence if it weren’t

  for all the other awesome stuff

  you do when the suit is left

  hanging like a salted hide

  in your gym locker, days when you

  are just a scholarship with teeth who

  writes what you cannot name

  but know is there, the way your father

  knows each bone in his back

  is there, by the pain that cracks the quiet,

  the spell your skin casts over every classroom

  you enter. On principle, the dancing

  routine complicates things but you, sir,

  are distinctly postmodern

  in your ideas about race

  & performance though you

  do not yet know the word postmodern