in the diesel of rotten potato flies
and sour milk leaking out the side
one man raised
a trash can
in the year before the mini-series
one man pulled the lever
worked the crusher’s
commotion in the year
before Master and Kizzy
one man grabbed a lid
while another ran ahead
all of them hollering
back and forth
another self-portrait disguised
(worse crime) as grandiose
idealization of working-class
descendants of slaves
by he who makes a profession
of writing on the breezeway
when I pedaled
my bike down the gravel drive
and said hi one man
wiped his forehead
with the back of his glove
called me little man—
what’s up little man
how you doing
little man
little man big poet in the diesel of
mid-June Jackson
you have no idea
you want your children to play
with garbage men
you want your grandchildren
to load roach-bait coffee grounds
rank ass egg shells
who’s your hero now
bon hypocrite?
one man jumped up
and stood on the back bumper
his boots
high above pavement
the truck rounding
the corner giving him
the appearance of flight
or levitation one
man little man
waited most Wednesdays
for their arrival
and isn’t that
your mother hazy
in the background
representing the moral
element—radiance
of folded towels balanced
in her slender arms—
saying garbage men
made next to nothing
by which you know
damn well what she meant
little man had the makings
of a fine communist
of barter everyone
performs a service receives
all in turn—each
necessary task equal
in its necessity
why not just say one black man
or do you mean to imply
that all garbage men are black
and so naturally everyone
would understand that
another testament to your little
man mind over-baked
in the scrappy shade
of your cherished yet wholly
inadequate magnolia
little man saw the movie Roots
in third grade too
his friends circled him screamed
we’re not your slave anymore
screamed “honkey honkey”
to which he replied “nigger
nigger” until all voices
finally wore out and no one really apologized
I don’t know if we had a word yet
for that kind of sorry
but the day grew longer
than our collective history
and we all went back
to pitching pennies
against the brick wall
behind the lunchroom
write this, little man: one man
Medgar Evers stepped from his car
cradling t-shirts that read “Jim Crow
Must Go!” then one man
crouching issued his own soul
forth to eternity in white hell
his Enfield rifle
behind the camellias by the driveway
and the trash cans
one garbage man had a pic of Muhammad Ali
on his baseball cap
which little man remembers
in problems of philosophy
fly like Schopenhauer
sting like Nietzsche
and like at least
half the white people there
he wanted flies
on the grave of Byron De La Beckwith
—of the other half he recalled
from childhood despairingly
one Westside Baptist Church rule: don’t wear your Cub Scout uniform to school
the blacks will see it
and want to join
at long last little man grows up
aimless joint that aimless college
who picks up your garbage now
what’s his name what’s his life like
how much acid did you drop
hey little man didn’t I see you
now keep that mess on your side
of the wide
lily white page
after my eight a.m. Mickey
Mouse math (still too
difficult for me) I lay
down in my dorm room
dreamed I was walking down the hall
on my way to nap
on my door was a thumbtacked dollar bill
on which someone left
a message or a poem
but when I tried to read it
it turned to bits
and floated around
like plastic snow in a plastic globe
so I walked in and there on my bed
I saw a newspaper
the headline read local boy
wins award
then that too flew into pieces
then re-assembled
on my closet door
into a black-and-white poster
of LeVar Burton
as Kunta Kinte he was holding
his hands up
his chains still on
but his shackles broken
as if he’d been there
waiting for me
calling my name