Black Hymn for my Past and Future Family
After Terrance Hayes
Grandpops stumbled, then sang but there never was a black male hysteria
Into hallowed graves where brittle bones huffed dust; Mississippi breathes,
Shrugs a two-step to shake bedrock beneath, its necrophiliac lips blow life
Into headstones. Puckered fingers burst first, followed by arms in some
Voodoo shit, the way they slip from tombstone to shadow. Coal-colored,
Spindly husks scouting shelter from the crowds gathering after sundown
Though the crowds couldn’t see, they linked arms and made blues from shadows
On the cold cobblestone steps where they hid, flames raged and set fire
To the currents of the present, the scorched flesh of one corpse oozing blood
Like the ski mask Grandpops wore in ’56 (it was necessary then – but the blood
Was an unarmed casualty nonetheless). He belted twelve-bar blues to a buckshot
Gospel, reenacting his history while the flames littered ashes on the liquor in his hands.
There was hysteria when the crowd saw only his stumbling in the dark, oblivious to flames
Raging and shadows chanting along, unaware that there never was a black male hysteria
grandaddy hits on a cutething
maroon clutch in hand, smooth feet parade
to You Go To My Head. Your body is electric
heat, wisps of energy whipping grown folks
into submission; a redbone, slender waist
a few states from home; a real Black
Betty, no slave-funk but you know
how to work me. Let’s shuffle to windy city
nights, whirlwind past the clock’s hour hand.
Red hair, you move like Josephine Baker,
stirring something that shakes and wobbles
in my knees. I’m a southern man, but hands locked
together we can climb from Canton, Mississippi
to stargaze on steel mountains in Chicago’s skyline.
I say I make suits and you can’t deny it –
I’m smooth when I sail across the floor
and seize your sharp mind, so let my dark skin
bark and nip at your red tones, make a home
by my side with your light-skinned figure. You say
you’re a nurse and I believe it, the way you surgically
tatter my two-piece suit, you part my pounding
red veins to pluck the same heart strings that beat
to your symphony. Lean close: the thud
of my bold, Black soul is a song
composed just for you.
~~~
Malcolm A. Robinson is a nonbinary writer currently pursuing a degree at FSU. Their work has previously appeared in Interim Magazine. They write out of their home in Orlando, FL, bedroom-bound and banjo-playing for the larger part of the pandemic.
the museum of americana: A LITERARY REVIEW 