Once upon a time wagons
circled ‘round The Juice and
bassackwards Thom-ass
Clarence. Today, I see
semi-circled wagons and
hear tears in voices and
explanations that don’t
Explain… I feel like saying,
Lady Day like, “Hush, now…”
You see, once upon a time
ketchup was a Vegetable;
contras Freedom Fighters;
Vietnam noble;
Bottled water a
Crime of status as
Alphabet agencies
flooded the ‘hood with
white powder, prison
culture/murder music—
The Reagan ‘80s
when Jel-
Low
Puddin’
Man
trickled
down
Jel-
Low
Puddin’
Man
trickled
down
on a landscape littered with blood,
bodies, caged men and women—their
Heroic Black Liberation Movement/War
Exhausted…
Jel-
Low
Puddin’
Man
trickled
down
piling
sugary
skyscrapers
of Huxtabullshit
on the black bourgeoisie’s
Taste for franchises, sub-
contracts, soft leather
seats in boardrooms—
On alley Black backs…
Jel-
Low
Puddin’
Man
trickled
down
and
Teddy told me—and I’m
paraphrasing— “I think
you betta let it go… if it
Looks like another Booker TKO!”
© 2018. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved
Kevin Alexander Gray mixed the political and the cultural as he evoked life for Black people in the rural south and made connections with James Brown in one beautiful essay.
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The following is part of the first installment of our “Captive Maternal Roundtable” on Joy James’ new book, In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love: Precarity, Power, Communities.
The following is part of the first installment of our “Captive Maternal Roundtable” on Joy James’ new book, In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love: Precarity, Power, Communities.
