NYU Black Renaissance Noire Volume 18 Issue 3 - Fall 2018 | Page 18

poetry
By nv baker
Gentrification
There’s this fucking dude in Chicago
On weekend mornings
He’s got his gleanings & wears string medallions
On one string, got a handset of an old phone
Got a cowbell, got a cardboard sign that says “Black Chicago”
He’s even managed to get the writ notarized
But it cost him most his teeth
Fucking guy’s something really
He’s got a rooster that’ll perch on his hand
Cock rides the shopping cart handle with a firm grip & preaches
The word to dope heads on Wednesdays at noon for a small taste
& eats the lice out of the fucking dude’s hog bristle beard
Lays an egg in the fucking dude’s mouth every morning too.
There’s this fucking dude in Chicago
On weekend mornings
Wearing strings & signs with small writ
Saying “You own equity, not people, ‘cause nouns is a liability”
You can find him outside of the houses
Who are having garage sales
Fucking guy’s something really
Until he is asked to leave
Amputating a single inch off of his stilts, every time
Until he is short enough to beg
& tall enough to be realized, dismissed
The prophet finally emblazoned on a coffee cup
Painted by Tomas fucking Kinkaid
Lodged into a box & regifted in concept.
end.
There’s this fucking dude in Chicago
On the weekend mornings
He trundles
& his shopping cart trundles too
He pulls up to garage sales
& steps politely ten feet away
Slangs his shit that no
One wants on the dope corners, tangible merchandise
Until he’s asked to leave, & he’s always asked to leave
You can find him in the evening with a highlighter & a newspaper
Squatting in the alleyways with his pants down around his jaws
Fucking guy’s something really
Face forested by a white Brillo bearding
Knows all the fucking cops & they buy him coffee
& the cops clean his ears with those
Chinese wax removers while he cocks his head
& listens to the flame
The weather’s hard with the lake effect
& the cops lick castor oil into his chilblains for it.
There’s this fucking dude in Chicago
On weekend mornings
The bars don’t open until he raps at the wood of the portals
Patron’s all supplicants as he cracks & coughs &
Bleeds glitter into the slat perforations of the keg cellars
Drinking nothing but well rum for the islandry of it
Fucking guy’s something really
Got two different colors of eyes
Dark brown & light brown
Eighth son of an eighth son
Designated after the portion of
The corner of a twist-rendered sandwich baggie
“Ziplock, man, always
Zip lock.”
There’s this fucking dude in Chicago
On the weekend mornings
His body had rails
His bones gleamed right through the sky
Looked also like he had somehow managed to fit stilts
On the bottoms of his sockless feet &
Pull his shoes up over the whole of the stilts
Misappropriating the vertical
Space in a feat of chimerical brilliance
Fucking guy’s something, really
Whole world hidden
The river Thames, the Bridges of London, the Empire State
Between where the Black Man’s heel & insole meet.