Notes for If I Fade Away [“tell them—inside the language”]
For your future daughters
tell them—inside the language
of night—Trip’s story. how he downed
bottles of rotgut to build a free morning, unshackled
inside a massive cage—a captive
King. the dewy grass, soaked & rotted wood
of every picnic table in sight, ragtag gang
formations under the morning lights. please
tell them how Trip slurred a Thursday
to make-believe he had stumbled home—back
to that country called Grandville Ave.
yet stayed tightly held inside these fences
we share, damn near tears
telling a lifer about this cold network which has grown
reckless to be the father of all these lost
men.—all they know is Daddy, he said
& so the threads of home weave inward
& like clockwork they return to their Patriarch. please
tell them how everyone & no one knew
Trip had stabbed another boy & the panoptic lenses
collected each moment, how his warm hand held
a glint of steel—sharpened down to six inches
of hard desire—& how the soft skin of a cheek
accents like a comma in a long love poem, when a banger
thrusts above an open mouth—each stab a secret
as intimate as Adam’s finger reaching toward
God or lips pressing your temple, your lover’s tongue
tracing your inner thigh. tell them some bodies
die over this—the closeness of open skin
& how there always flows another stanza
somewhere. how Trip was cuffed & stripped
& sent to the hole—& how Ruben fell under suicide watch
after he adopted a rap for the hot steel, weeks before
being released to the echoes of Glenwood & Webber.
tell them how blood & steel & longing
& all those avenues & streets compose a music
of endless search that trickles down like rain
upon the edge of our world & its religion
of warm flesh.
Source: Poetry (February 2021)