lateposting on my experience at AIDSwalk San Francisco

I wrote this for the SF AIDS Walk. they called me to read a poem.
I ended up reading another with less dense mataphors,but this one will get read at another program of theirs soon.


Quietus(Silences)

A dogwhistled conversation
Extended from a 70s Pan-Afrikan preschool
Coated with strains of Ella Jenkins
Floating to his first bathhouse jaunt
Mid 90s
Heart thumping to Frankie Knuckles rhythm
Throat catching
Thick with thoughts of what this would be
Yet no way around
This speaking with/out saying
It’s just the way, it seems
If you don’t know, you betta ask somebody
And somebody might tell you if youre lucky


The teens begin with
Eyecuts
Sideways gazing
“What-ups” keep my chin strong
Not giving away too much to any potential
Boyfriends
Friendboys
Or boys who are friendly
Or ex-wives their cuts to the chase
Or long and longer distance sistagirlfriends
Who begin exchanging their dashed hopes of
red black and green picket fences
For fifteen dollar Tuskeegee-isms that still mean "faggot"
Even when I am forgetting to remember


I am reminded of lynchmobs in Black History Month filmstrips
Bull Connor calling the freedom riders nigra
because that was somehow more polite
than saying what he meant

I knew who Mel was though mama wouldn’t say
Even though they’d been friends for thirty years
Just knew the way we know each other
And just like that it seemed
He was gone
Beaten to blood a month after we met

Fifteen years later
Losing words not quite as often
Almost famous
A bit heavier from too much smothered steak and theory
Mom and I talk about the week before they found his body
The frantic call
His cologne having broken his chest out
In purple blotches
My heart sinks but I manage to hold together a whisper
To convey the old truth he was afraid to tell
It works like magic
The magic that is work
And the weight begins to lift
As sharing this heavy makes us happy
Excitedly pulling the plastic off the new sofa
In this great big living room