POEM OF THE WEEK: CEDRIC TILLMAN
Cedric Tillman
Supremacy, or The Black Lifestyle
As much as people try to sound like they don’t care, some people think a black president will look out for the black lifestyle. – an NC woman, on Ben Carson
When I was comin’ up rough/that wasn’t even what you called it/that’s why I smoke blunts now & run with alcoholics – Tupac, “Fuck The World”
I
How to feed six kids?
She doesn’t know
who hit her.
They land where they land,
poor babies they stroll about
here and there
petals they blow at the wind
in their idle time.
Anything is possible here,
this is no poverty of programming
the way they stud themselves
with wifeys, no one compels
the holocaust in their volitions
the herd is culled behind those fences
not everyone
is gonna make it.
II
black blood
courses with hemophilias
counts time in sickled cells
all manner
of heritable conditions
keloid the American skin
over the redline
my brother laid me down
says
fuck I look like, thinks
I should know better
than to come around
looking like something to eat
happened by
while he was
gaunt and emotional
bad lifetiming
find him
coached
always in pistol formation
my brother
crosses the street slow
like he wants you to hit him
mistakes his net worth
for his value
never was nettled
by planes and towers
wears his pants below his ass
like an accusation
III
you must be
a superhero
an overcomer the way
you don’t even come from
what you came from
just your
steely resolve, unbroken legs
and
joie de vivre
goading the want to
into
get-up-and-go
that propels you
toward pretentious subdivisions
the Harris Teeters with wine bars
beyond beltways
even we aspire to
the charter school
beyond the terminus
of the MARTA line
IV
perhaps I can borrow
your imperviousness
If I make it
can I
have it retroactivated
some
radical
reconstruction
at least
an EMT
who knows
how we bleed
in the absence
of clotting agents
while we can still
see the gauze
in each other’s eyes
before my mouth
freezes in applause
and I gurgle more liberty
over the corners
of my lips
which are angled in your direction
like greater-than signs.
Cedric Tillman graduated from UNC Charlotte and American University’s Creative Writing MFA program. He is also a Cave Canem graduate fellow. His debut poetry collection, entitled LILIES IN THE VALLEY, was published by Willow Books in 2013. He lives in Northern Virginia.
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