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Poem (American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin): Probably twilight makes blackness dangerous

Darkness. Probably all my encounters

Are existential jambalaya. Which is to say,

A nigga can survive. Something happened

In Sanford, something happened in Ferguson

And Brooklyn & Charleston, something happened

In Chicago & Cleveland & Baltimore & happens

Almost everywhere in this country every day.

Probably someone is prey in all of our encounters.

You won’t admit it. The names alive are like the names

In graves. Probably twilight makes blackness

Darkness. And a gate. Probably the dark blue skin

Of a black man matches the dark blue skin

Of his son the way one twilight matches another.

Analysis:
In the poem "American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin," by Terrance Hayes, a narrator describes the ways in which a hypothetical person of color faces discrimination and danger as a result of the color of their skin. This poem was written after several high profile shootings of African American men by police officers, and as a result is a commentary on police brutality and systemic racism. The poem begins with the statement "probably twilight makes blackness dangerous

Darkness." Not only does Hayes support his central theme, that being black is dangerous, he also connects the danger of being black to historic danger that many black people have faced, in this case night rides by the KKK, that made it impossible for black people to feel safe at night. The narrator then goes on to reference that " Something happened

In Sanford, something happened in Ferguson

And Brooklyn & Charleston, something happened

In Chicago & Cleveland & Baltimore & happens

Almost everywhere in this country every day." By listing out all the instances of police brutality, the narrator is stating that systemic racism is not an isolated incidence and instead is something that happens every day and must be addressed. Finally, the narrator concludes by stating that the color "Of a black man matches the dark blue skin, Of his son the way one twilight matches another." By highlighting the ways in which all black men have been stereotyped, and have therefore lost their individuality, the narrator is making claim that the system is set up to hurt people of color, and that people of color were always considered second class citizens.

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Poem (The Golden Shovel): When I am so small Da’s sock covers my arm, we

cruise at twilight until we find the place the real

men lean, bloodshot and translucent with cool.

His smile is a gold-plated incantation as we

drift by women on bar stools, with nothing left

in them but approachlessness. This is a school

I do not know yet. But the cue sticks mean we

are rubbed by light, smooth as wood, the lurk

of smoke thinned to song. We won’t be out late.

Standing in the middle of the street last night we

watched the moonlit lawns and a neighbor strike

his son in the face. A shadow knocked straight

Da promised to leave me everything: the shovel we

used to bury the dog, the words he loved to sing

his rusted pistol, his squeaky Bible, his sin.

The boy’s sneakers were light on the road. We

watched him run to us looking wounded and thin.

He’d been caught lying or drinking his father’s gin.

He’d been defending his ma, trying to be a man. We

stood in the road, and my father talked about jazz,

how sometimes a tune is born of outrage. By June

the boy would be locked upstate. That night we

got down on our knees in my room. If I should die

before I wake. Da said to me, it will be too soon.

Analysis:
In the poem "The Golden Shovel," by Terrance Hayes, a man recounts on his childhood experiences to describe the trauma of his youth, he does this to comment on the tragic nature of certain people's circumstances and the effects that circumstances can have on a young child. When I started to read the poem I expected a nostalgic narrative about a boys childhood, lines like "I am so small Da’s sock covers my arm" and "we cruise at twilight until we find the place" create a nostalgic image, images of a better time that the speaker wishes to go back to and experience again. It made me think of moments in my own childhood that I wished to re experience, moments that I know I can never get back. However as the poem progresses the narrator begins to mention aspects of his childhood that were less than idealistic, such as "we

watched the moonlit lawns and a neighbor strike

his son in the face" and "by June

the boy would be locked upstate." create images of a boy struggling with the circumstances that surround him in the world. Images like this directly contrast with my own childhood, in which I never felt unsafe and always felt like I had a loving family at home, reminding me that not everyone has those privileges in life, and that I should be grateful that I do. Finally, the conclusion of the poem states "If I should die

before I wake. Da said to me, it will be too soon." Never have I ever felt so desperate in my own life that I would seriously consider myself better off dead, knowing that the thought is the heads of many, for good reason, makes me grateful for all that I have and reminds me to help those who have less. I connected to this poem for several reasons, firstly it stirred a nostalgic feeling within myself that reminded me of my childhood, which in turn made me want to go back to a simpler time. Secondly, it made me remember that I have extremely fortunate to have what I do in life and that I should appreciate it every day, as it might not always be there, and that I should strive to not only be happy for what I have, but give to others so that they can have more.

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Terrance Hayes is a poet and academic who has written several books about poetry and has won many awards for his work. Hayes currently works as a professor at NYU, after spending time at Carnegie, and The University of Pittsburgh. Terrance Hayes grew up in South Carolina, before going to Corker college to study english and play basketball. After that he went across the world, to places like Japan, to teach english and poetry. He later went on to publish several books of poetry and as recently as 2018 was the New York Times poetry editor. His first book of poetry was published in 1999.

Source Links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrance_Hayes

http://terrancehayes.com/about/#longbio

https://poets.org/poet/terrance-hayes

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https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/143919/american-sonnet-for-my-past-and-future-assassin-598dc95914688

American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin [“Why are you bugging me you stank minuscule husk”]

Why are you bugging me you stank minuscule husk

Of musk, muster & deliberation crawling over reasons

And possessions I have & have not touched?

Should I fail in my insecticide, I pray for a black boy

Who lifts you to a flame with bedeviled tweezers

Until mercy rises & disappears. You are the size

Of a stuttering drop of liquid — milk, machine oil,

Semen, blood. Yes, you funky stud, you are the jewel

In the knob of an elegant butt plug, snug between

Pleasure & disgust. You are the scent of rot at the heart

Of lovemaking. The meat inside your exoskeleton

Is as tender as Jesus. Neruda wrote of “a nipple

Perfuming the earth.” Yes, you are an odor, an almost

Imperceptible ode to death, a lousy, stinking stinkbug.

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https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/50786/new-folk

New Folk

I said Folk was dressed in Blues but hairier and hemped.

After "We acoustic banjo disciples!" Jebediah said, "When

and whereforth shall the bucolic blacks with good tempers

come to see us pluck as Elizabeth Cotton intended?"

We stole my Uncle Windchime's minivan, penned a simple

ballad about the drag of lovelessness and drove the end

of the chitlin' circuit to a joint skinny as a walk-in temple

where our new folk was not that new, but strengthened

by our twelve bar conviction. A month later, in pulled

a parade of well meaning alabaster post adolescents.

We noticed the sand-tanned and braless ones piled

in the ladder-backed front row with their boyfriends

first because beneath our twangor slept what I'll call

a hunger for the outlawable. One night J asked me when

sisters like Chapman would arrive. I shook my chin wool

then, and placed my hand over the guitar string's wind-

ow til it stilled. "When the moon's black," I said. "Be faithful."

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https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/57566/how-to-draw-a-perfect-circle

How to Draw a Perfect Circle

BY TERRANCE HAYES

I can imitate the spheres of the model’s body, her head,

Her mouth, the chin she rests at the bend of her elbow

But nothing tells me how to make the pupils spiral

From her gaze. Everything the eye sees enters a circle,

The world is connected to a circle: breath spools from the nostrils

And any love to be open becomes an O. The shape inside the circle

Is a circle, the egg fallen outside the nest the serpent circles

Rests in the serpent’s gaze the way my gaze rests on the model.

In a blind contour drawing the eye tracks the subject

Without observing what the hand is doing. Everything is connected

By a line curling and canceling itself like the shape of a snake

Swallowing its own decadent tail or a mind that means to destroy itself,

A man circling a railway underpass before attacking a policeman.

To draw the model’s nipples I have to let myself be carried away.

I love all the parts of the body. There are as many curves

As there are jewels of matrimony, as many whirls as there are teeth

In the mouth of the future: the mute pearls a bride wears to her wedding,

The sleeping ovaries like the heads of riders bunched in a tunnel.

The doors of the subway car imitate an O opening and closing,

In the blood the O spirals its helix of defects, genetic shadows,

But there are no instructions for identifying loved ones who go crazy.

When one morning a black man stabs a black transit cop in the face

And the cop, bleeding from his eye, kills the assailant, no one traveling

To the subway sees it quickly enough to make a camera phone witness.

The scene must be carried on the tongue, it must be carried

On the news into the future where it will distract the eyes working

Lines into paper. This is what blind contour drawing conjures in me.

At the center of God looms an O, the devil believes justice is shaped

Like a zero, a militant helmet or war drum, a fist or gun barrel,

A barrel of ruined eggs or skulls. To lift anything from a field

The lifter bends like a broken O. The weight of the body

Lowered into a hole can make anyone say Oh: the onlookers,

The mother, the brothers and sisters. Omen begins with an O.

When I looked into my past I saw the boy I had not seen in years

Do a standing backflip so daring the onlookers called him crazy.

I did not see a moon as white as an onion but I saw a paper plate

Upon which the boy held a plastic knife and sopping meat.

An assailant is a man with history. His mother struggles

To cut an onion preparing a meal to be served after the funeral.

The onion is the best symbol of the O. Sliced, a volatile gas stings

The slicer’s eyes like a punishment clouding them until they see

What someone trapped beneath a lid of water sees:

A soft-edged world, a blur of blooms holding a coffin afloat.

The onion is pungent, its scent infects the air with sadness,

All the pallbearers smell it. The mourners watch each other,

They watch the pastor’s ambivalence, they wait for the doors to open,

They wait for the appearance of the wounded one-eyed victim

And his advocates, strangers who do not consider the assailant’s funeral

Appeasement. Before that day the officer had never fired his gun

In the line of duty. He was chatting with a cabdriver

Beneath the tracks when my cousin circled him holding a knife.

The wound caused no brain damage though his eyeball was severed.

I am not sure how a man with no eye weeps. In the Odyssey

Pink water descends the Cyclops’s cratered face after Odysseus

Drives a burning log into it. Anyone could do it. Anyone could

Begin the day with his eyes and end it blind or deceased,

Anyone could lose his mind or his vision. When I go crazy

I am afraid I will walk the streets naked, I am afraid I will shout

Every fucked up thing that troubles or enchants me, I will try to murder

Or make love to everybody before the police handcuff or murder me.

Though the bullet exits a perfect hole it does not leave perfect holes

In the body. A wound is a cell and portal. Without it the blood runs

With no outlet. It is possible to draw handcuffs using loops

Shaped like the symbol for infinity, from the Latin infinitas

Meaning unboundedness. The way you get to anything

Is context. In a blind contour it is not possible to give your subject

A disconnected gaze. Separated from the hand the artist’s eye

Begins its own journey. It could have been the same for the Cyclops,

A giant whose gouged eye socket was so large a whole onion

Could fit into it. Separated from the body the eye begins

Its own journey. The world comes full circle: the hours, the harvests,

When the part of the body that holds the soul is finally decomposed

It becomes a circle, a hole that holds everything: blemish, cell,

Womb, parts of the body no one can see. I watched the model

Pull a button loose on her jeans and step out of them

As one might out of a hole in a blue valley, a sea. I found myself

In the dark, I found myself entering her body like a delicate shell

Or soft pill, like this curved thumb of mine against her lips.

You must look without looking to make the perfect circle.

The line, the mind must be a blind continuous liquid

Until the drawing is complete.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayunzVXtcoA

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https://psmag.com/education/terrance-hayes-love-poems-to-a-troubled-america

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https://www.latimes.com/books/la-ca-jc-terrance-hayes-20180614-story.html