Testify

I swear on the melody of trumpet vines,

ants feasting through animal crackers, Burt’s Bees,

Tyler Perry movies, my daddy’s .38 slug, footie-socks

inside high-top Jordans, disidentification, drag

queens, blond dreadlocks, headstones

salt-and-peppering the grass, vanilla wafers

in banana pudding, Zeus-swan chasing,

blunt-guts, sharp thumbnails, keloid scars,

cash-only bars, R&B songs, on what the pot

called the kettle. I put that on my mama’s good

hair, on playing solitaire with a phantom

limb, the white woman I go home to,

my auntie’s face when she says: You know

he always loved them pink toes. I put that on

everything, on the signifiers I gobble up,

candlesticks blown out by whistling lips.

I put that on dervishing records scratched

on down-beats, empty beehives,

fresh-fade head-slaps, hand claps, bamboo shoots,

liminality, mestizos, the purple-black crook

of my arm, split sternums, on You can’t save

him now. I put that on skinny jeans, get rich

quick schemes—Gotta get that C.R.E.A.M. Know what

I mean?—freckled black faces, leafless trees

throwing up gang signs, phlegm hocked

onto streets. I swear I catch more stones

than catfish. I lose more collard greens than sleep. I think

nothing is here but us darkies, high yellows, red bones,

cocoa butters. Someone, no, everyone has jungle fever.

Don’t touch my forehead. Blond

as moonshine, mute trombone choking.

I put that on Instagram. Post me to the endless chain

of signifiers. Strawberry gashes on kneecaps, Let me

get some dap, Newports, Kool’s, and folding

chairs instead of barstools, that white drool

caked on your face. Mommy please wipe away

the veil. I thought I was passing into the eye

of the streetlamp. I swear. I promise on frondless

palm trees, long pinkie nails, sixteen years, serve eight,

and Miss Addie’s red beans and rice, Ol’ Dirty Bastard

and the brother on the Cream of Wheat box. It don’t mean

a thing if it don’t buckle your knees. Open your hands.

I’ll give you a song, give you the Holy Ghost

from a preacher’s greasy palm—When he hit me, I didn’t

fall, felt eyes jabbing me, tagging me. Oh no he didn’t!—

give you the om from the small of her back.

I put that on double consciousness, multiple jeopardy,

and performativity. Please make sure my fetters

and manacles are tight. Yea baby, I like bottomless

bullet chambers. I swear on the creation of Uncle Tom—

some white woman's gospel. She got blue eyes? I love

me some—on Josiah Henson, the real Uncle Tom, on us still

believing in Uncle Tom. Lord, have mercy!

Put that on the black man standing on my shoulders holding

his balls. Put that on the black man I am—I am not—on

the black man I wish I was.

Source: Testify (Red Hen Press, 2017)