The Crown Ain't Worth Much

by Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib

  there is only the dark alley shepherding you home

  there is only the boombox that has lived longer than your neighbor’s child

  there is only the cd inside its back red and scratched

  like it was tied to the whipping post

  and forced to skip in the same spot every night

  it plays:

  you see the hood’s been good to me

  you see the hood’s been good

  you see the hood

  you see the hood

  you see

  ODE TO DRAKE, ENDING WITH BLOOD IN A FIELD

  yeah we finally learned how / to undress a whole season / with just our tongues / & pull back the sheets / with its taste / still in our mouths / & that’ll do ‘til / our lovers come back / or ‘til we find one / who will take us / despite our flaws & / how we can’t stop building monuments / to all of them / so that we never have / to apologize to anyone / not for all of / the gold / or the backwards / hats & new walk / in every city like / we run shit / but mufuckas never / loved us / they’ll never forget / about the teen dramas / mine weren’t on tv / so I don’t need tattoos / but I also curse / more on the eastside these days / I don’t want to be threatening / just feared / enough to never have to / make a fist / I learned this when / the dj got dragged / out his whip after / the block party for / playing too much marvin gaye / & not enough mobb deep / ‘cuz make love / when the time is right / but we still hood / don’t you ever / get it fucked up / & have you heard / what they say about men / who have swallowed / decades of summer? / & how they will come / for us with broken glass / in their teeth / & carry us on / their backs / to where the grass be / taller than them project buildings / once was / & they will cut open / our stomachs & / wear our sunlight / around their shoulders / like a mother’s arms / & summer won’t end / until after they have / forgotten the flags we planted.

  THE SUMMER A TRIBE CALLED QUEST BROKE UP

  1995. AFTER THE STREETLIGHTS DRINK WHATEVER DARKNESS IS LEFT

  we stop throwin up jump shots cuz the rim seen better days

  whole hood seen better days

  whole hood bent & cracked & been

  held together on a prayer despite the shallow bricks &

  the homie says these the hours where black boys vanish

  says we gotta find shelter before teeth grow through all this twilight

  says one time I looked up at the moon and I haven’t seen my big brother since

  says I guess this skin we wear expires with the sun

  says we were born into curfew & I think

  what a way to be young & alive

  but then we hear the vibrant song of sirens cutting through the night

  & even as boys our legs know to carry us to someone’s grandma’s crib

  & we don’t yet know why & we don’t yet understand the way

  a grandmother’s arms linger around our fragile limbs for a few seconds

  longer when we finally make it home breathing & in the winter

  danny lost track of time shooting free throws

  & we had to bury all of the parts of him that the night left,

  still brimming with bullets & then

  none of the black boys

  got new basketballs for

  christmas.

  XVI

  didn’t nobody’s mama’s / mama / bite clean through the meat / of their bottom lip / while on they knees / in the corner of some white man’s kitchen / so their grandbaby could mow lawns / for four dollars an hour / during a hot and infinite summer / ‘til they hands became a poppy field / of blisters /

  but oh well / god knows / we work ‘til we fly / god knows grandma worked / ‘til sudden wings grew out her back / and now sunday dinners ain’t the same / pops ain’t left the bedroom since july / when I got enough money for those new jordans / and it rained for two weeks / straight / we so Midwest / we so pretty sunrise / but bet there be a storm later / bet some thunder rattles the walls /

  so I walk past them white air force ones / I’m on that all black shit again / I’m on that all my flaws be glowing when I’m held to the light shit again / but at least I clean up easy / at least I can run into a storm / and cover all manner of sins / at least I can wear these ‘til winter rides over the hills / and settles on the front porch / or ‘til all that snow melt / and I gotta walk through franklin park to get to jasmine house / cuz she love how fresh I got since last school year / now I got the whole hood grasping for this fly / got my kicks sinking / into the wet mud / got ancestors grabbing at my feet from their graves

  DISPATCHES FROM THE BLACK BARBERSHOP, TONY’S CHAIR. 1996.

  we all know a couple niggas doin a bid derrick ain’t comin home for another 20 cuz he shot up westside trevor’s whip after trevor slapped his baby’s mom yo tuck your lip so I can get this beard anyway trevor ain’t die at least not that night but someone gonna have to catch his ass slippin we from the streets we ain’t just gonna let niggas put hands on women we ain’t just gonna let niggas keep their hands we all got mamas you know but I don’t fuck with guns no more I got babies now you dig tilt your head into the light for me anyway yeah I got babies my nigga derrick ain’t gonna see his babies til they too heavy to lift til they forget that he got a body that don’t live in front of glass goddamn bruh I can’t be out here like that I got to eat I got to make this money I can’t give nobody a reason to wear my face on a tshirt you feel me police already want a nigga in a metal box or or a wooden box I ain’t gonna let myself get buried I saw derrick’s baby’s mom on east courtright digging a hole in the mud with her bare hands till they cracked wide open hold still I accidentally cut a nigga yesterday cuz he wouldn’t stop moving the blood ain’t stop for like four hours the blood was everywhere the blood was a river the blood ran on to the street was like that shit had legs I ain’t seen that much blood since I last fell asleep in my girl’s arms I ain’t seen that much blood since my first son was born and all the dreams I been havin since

  I DON’T REMEMBER THE WHOLE SUMMER WHEN “DO THE RIGHT THING” DROPPED

  but I do remember the night that police got a hold of Big Mike from North Linden & beat his face into the sweltering brick outside what used to be a Pizza Hut until it got robbed by some southside stickup kids two summers earlier & then my big brother said it had to shut down cuz niggas ain’t gonna get a gun held to they head for minimum wage & Mike used to deliver pizzas to the hood before the hood woke up in winter with new hungers & come spring, Mike was rockin’ a gold rope ‘round his neck thicker than the coils in a hangman’s knot & that’s when the cops on the eastside began to lick their lips & when their hands started to tremble while whispering ‘bout what they would do to him if they ever caught his ass, which maybe explains the way his bright blood painted the abandoned brick & the five police still pressing their heels into his face even after his right eye swung free from its socket, a grisly pendulum & my big brother left me home alone & hungry that night when the whole hood ran from their homes and set upon the police with any weapon they could find & they say that Mike’s face was a bloody & wet mess & they say he wasn’t breathing or they say he ain’t have a mouth anymore or they say all of him was a dark & gaping hole & they say the police grew fangs & they say the thick fur pushed through their shirts while Mike bled & earlier that day, my big brother hid his white jordans in his bookbag when he came back to the hood from his suburban job & he walked in the door & said we all one handful of gold away from a closed casket funeral & I don’t know how many mothers walked from the mouth of that summer childless but I could see the old Pizza Hut burning from my window & I could see a cop being dragged into the bushes by the stickup kids & isn’t it funny how art most imitates life when a black body is being drained of it? how easily we can imitate that which is never coming back again to claim its space? & when my big brother came home that night, he carried me to bed with a glass of warm milk & when a drop of blood fell from his knuckles & blended into the white of the glass, I did not ask who it belong
ed to.

  WINDSOR TERRACE, 1990

  Around the flickering old box that Jason’s granddad lifted from the corner of Aven and Barnett, we huddle our limbs to watch Mike Tyson’s legs become stiff oak

  before he falls at the feet of Buster Douglas, who used to live right over there on Linden. Where, legend has it, he dunked so hard in a high school game that the air felt like a spaceship

  took off right here in the streets and the ground ain’t stopped vibrating since. Some nights, we press our bodies to it and feel the hum run through the dark fat of our small legs,

  rise and tell our mothers we can fill their fists with gold one day, buy our way out of this persistent stew of cold and sleeplessness.

  On the television, Tyson is crawling around on the canvas like I’ve seen a man crawl on the living room floor, praying for enough change to keep a baby’s modest stomach

  full for another night and maybe these two things are both a survival of violence. A man is shown his own blood and plummets to the earth

  before trying to force himself to rise once more. When people pay money to watch, we call this sport. When people spill from their apartments

  into a dim alley or a decaying school yard to watch, we call this the ghetto. But the cheering is the same. The excitement one gets in watching legs

  that are not their own twitching in the dirt has never left us, ever since we watched the first funeral roll slow down the block.

  And now Tyson is trying to force his mouthpiece between his unhinged and begging mouth while reaching for the ropes and

  Jason’s grandfather’s trembling voice is whispering

  get up boy, goddamn.

  get up just one more time.

  and he is almost looking past the television, into the night.

  AIN’T NONE OF THE KIDS ON MY BLOCK GONNA DEBATE ABOUT THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

  cuz

  this 1 time

  summer ’91 MJ jumped

  From way out

  n stayed

  up there

  so long swear we

  thought grandpa

  finally got sober

  but he still smellin

  like the sweat you

  get from trynna

  outrun some real heavy

  shit that done finally caught

  yo ass n MJ showin

  James Worthy the rock in

  one hand but then he

  take it away n James lookin

  like he just lost his mama in

  the grocery store or

  some shit but MJ still up there

  n ain’t nobody else

  wit ‘em so we all packed close to

  the TV n when he finally

  come down

  Brandon big cousin

  (who used to be showing

  the whole hood

  the rock

  n how to get high

  n never come down)

  flushed his stash

  down the toilet

  n grabbed a ball

  said “you lil niggas the Lakers”

  n swear to god he flew

  til the sun came up

  ODE TO KANYE WEST IN TWO PARTS, ENDING IN A CHAIN OF MOTHERS RISING FROM THE RIVER

  I wake up the morning after another award show and I hear

  the calls surging over the mountains again

  I hear ‘em

  saying

  hey

  boy

  you know we ain’t

  rupture this country’s spine and unearth all its gold for you people to cocoon

  your teeth in it

  let your mouths spill all over our sacred trophies get fingerprints on the gilded

  bark

  of crowns

  our men earn and set in the fire until they melt down into the bright and flesh of

  another woman who will never cup your face

  in her hands

  and sing into your ear while the certain darkness of night turns chicago to a

  muted child

  you ain’t getting that again ‘til heaven calls for your body

  after it been tied to a truck in east texas

  by another diamond drowned jesus chain

  and dragged through that jagged metal holy land so you can meet god clean

  open and split

  just give us your neck and we will carry you back to the sound

  of your

  mama’s voice

  •

  when I say I wanted the boy who cursed my dead mother’s name to become a ghost, I mean I wanted the bones of him to rattle on his father’s nightstand. I wanted another man to wake up haunted as the men who christened every morning screaming into the shell of whatever buried love still lived in the wood of the only home they could afford and isn’t that also another language for grief? there are only so many ways to dream about a corpse before you find new things to call sleep, or a new thing worth closing your eyes for the woman pulling you to the warmth of her living mouth or Nina Simone’s voice laid tight and naked over something your boys can rap to until there is enough money to move out the hood and into somewhere not creased with songs of the lifeless. Somewhere with food for everyone, even if it ain’t the fish our mothers cooked on Sundays, the smell of it crawling in under our bedroom doors and folding us in its arms. When I say I wanted the boy who cursed my dead mother’s name to become a ghost I mean I wanted the bones of uncooked fish to rattle in his throat while everyone he loved watched with their hands pressed underneath their chairs. I think I’m better now. I still watch a couple dance with their smiling children in a park and I want to tell them how easy it is for all of us to wake up next to someone who never will again. I am like you. I still want to feast on the happiest moments of strangers. I don’t know what this makes men like us except bound to our loneliness, crawling on our hands and knees again through the southern mud that women we loved once pushed between their black toes, until we reach the river. press our lips to the bank. whisper their names into the delicate brown earth and pray the water parts this time. Every mother we gave over to death, walking from its cool mouth. A wet and thrashing catfish in their arms. They will ask

  have you eaten, child?

  you closed your eyes

  during another one of my sweet songs

  and I thought you would

  never wake

  ALL OF THE BLACK BOYS FINALLY STOPPED PACKING SWITCHBLADES

  since the summer of ‘98 when

  danny went into the pit and got his front teeth

  divorced from the rest of his mouth by the fist

  of some white boy from the side of town

  where no one buries a boy that came into the world

  after they did and no one ever has to swallow

  their own blood and pray that it will keep them

  fed until morning

  so danny told us that he was going to

  go home with someone’s teeth even if they weren’t

  the ones that he came here with

  because how many things have we boys had ripped

  from our mouths and never replaced by anyone?

  how much of our language has been pulled over the tongues

  of everyone but us?

  reparations were sought in dark alleys with a blade sharp

  enough to scare a jaw open and a prayer out of a sinner’s

  mouth which explains how the white boy wept

  and called for his father when being pressed

  into the brick with danny’s foot against his neck while

  we watched until danny finally let the boy

  go and we ran back out east towards our homes and maybe

  it was the way the rain howled or maybe where

  we come from we see everything drowning in red anyway

  or maybe there is no other way to explain the haste with which I

  make my pockets barren before leaving the house

  even today

  or why
my wife needs a bigger purse to carry such weight

  for the both of us

  but when the police came for us that night

  we did not hear a sound until danny’s blade fell out his pocket

  and the bullets that followed

  because I guess anything can be a gun if the darkness

  surrounding it is hungry enough

  or at least that’s what I’ve been told when

  the bodies of black boys thrash against what

  little life they have left tethering them to the earth

  and isn’t that what we’ve always been fed? that it is

  just like the nighttime

  to rename everything that moves

  into a monster?

  ON JUKEBOXES

  the ones on sheridan ave stopped playing motown in the fall once the frat boys found out they could drink for cheap & stumble down the block loud & pulsating with the night the way our fathers used to when this side of town was still thick with their fingerprints & so we take the cash we won over on the north courts, where jason ain’t missed a jump shot since his big brother got outta prison & started to slow dance with them corners again, & we go to the quik mart to buy some quarter water that don’t quench anything except our desire to be black & young & spend the money we earned with our own sweat & I think something about that is also black & our parents ain’t seen us since morning stretched over the hood & all these decaying rooftops but we still hop in tyler’s mama’s ford & go down to sheridan ave to see the old head who sits outside monk’s bar with a newport forever swinging from his bottom lip so low it defy gravity & for the right price, he been known to sing whatever marvin gaye song he’s sober enough to remember & so we take what change we got left & put it in his cup & he starts in on some marvin & the words “brother, brother, brother / there’s far too many of you dying” crawl out from his lips & grow legs & a whole body right there on the sidewalk & it wraps itself around us & jason is bent over & heaving & I try not to look & tell myself that it’s because we played eight games straight earlier & summer came through the hood this year & decided to stay too long & wear out its welcome like tyler’s grandma in his family’s 2-bedroom apartment but that’s why he been staying at my crib lately & I think to tell my boys we should go back there before we run into midnight & the questions that come with it & before I can say anything some capital university kids run up & take the old head’s change cup & run away yelling this ain’t the side of town for y’all anymore & when I get accepted there in the winter, me & jason stop talking.