Major Jackson

Major Jackson was born in 1968 in Philadelphia. He is a graduate of Temple University and holds an MFA from the University of Oregon. His poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry 2004, American Poetry Review, Boulevard, Callaloo, The New Yorker, Post Road, and elsewhere. Jackson is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Library of Congress Witter Bynner Fellowship, a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, a fellowship from The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, a commission from The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, and other honors. His debut collection, Leaving Saturn (University of Georgia, 2002), won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize for the best first book by an African American poet and was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist. Formerly the Literary Arts Curator of Philadelphia’s Painted Bride Art Center, Jackson lives in South Burlington, Vermont, and teaches at the University of Vermont and the low-residency Creative Writing MFA Program at Queens University of Charlotte. His second book of poems, Hoops, is forthcoming from W.W. Norton.

Blunts

The first time I got high I stood in a circle

of boys at 23rd & Ridge tucked inside

a doorway that smelled of piss. It was

March, the cold rains all but blurred

our sight as we feigned sophistication

passing a bullet-shaped bottle of malt.

Johnny Cash had a love for transcendental

numbers & explained between puffs resembling

little gasps of air the link to all creation was

the mathematician. Malik, the smartest

of the crew, counterargued & cited the holy life

of prayer as a gateway to the Islamic faith

that was for all intents the true path

for the righteous black man. No one disputed.

Malik cocked his head, pinched

the joint & pulled so hard we imagined

his lips crazy-glued into stiff O’s. It was long

agreed that Lefty would inherit his father’s

used-car business, thus destined for a life of wrecks.

Then, amid a fit of coughing, I broke

the silence. I want to be a poet. It was nearing

dinnertime. Jësus lived here. His sister was yelling

at their siblings over the evening news & game shows.

The stench of hot dogs & sauerkraut drifted

down the dank hallway. A prespring wind flapped

the plastic covering of a junkman’s shopping cart

as Eddie Hardrick licked left to right, the thin strip

of glue at the edge of a rolling paper, then uttered,

So, you want the tongue of God. I bent double

in the blade of smoke & looked up for help.

It was too late; we were tragically hip.

Euphoria

Late winter, sky darkening after school,

& groceries bought from Shop-Mart,

My mother leaves me parked on Diamond

To guard her Benz, her keys half-turned

So I can listen to the Quiet Storm

While she smokes a few white pebbles

At the house crumbling across the street.

I clamber to the steering wheel,

Undo my school tie, just as Luther Vandross

Starts in on that one word tune, “Creepin’.”

The dashboard’s panel of neon glows,

And a girl my age, maybe sixteen or so,

In a black miniskirt, her hair crimped

With glitter, squats down to pane glass

And asks, A date, baby? For five?

Outside, street light washes the avenue

A cheap orange: garbage swirling

A vacant lot; a crew of boys slap-boxing

On the corner, throwing back large swills

Of malt; even the sidewalk teeming with addicts,

Their eyes spread thin as egg whites.

She crams the crushed bill down

Her stockings, cradles & slides her palm

In rhythm to my hips’ thrashing,

In rhythm to Luther’s voice, which flutters

Around that word I now mistake for “Weep”

As sirens blast the neighborhood &

My own incomprehensible joy to silence.

Out of the house my mother steps,

Returned from the ride of her life,

Studies pavement cracks for half-empty vials,

Then looks back at bricked-over windows

As though what else mattered—

A family, a dinner, a car, nothing

But this happiness so hard to come by.

Pest

I heard the terrible laughter of termites

deep inside a spray-painted wall on Sharswood.

My first thought was that of Swiss cheese

hardening on a counter at the American Diner.

My second thought was that of the senator

from Delaware on the senate floor.

I was on my way to a life of bagging tiny mountains,

selling poetry on the corners of North Philly,

a burden to mothers & Christians.

Hearing it, too, the cop behind me shoved me

aside for he was an entomologist

in a former lifetime & knew the many

song structures of cicadas, bush crickets &

fruit flies. He knew the complex courtship

of bark beetles, how the male excavates

a nuptial chamber & buries himself—

his back end sticking out till a female sang

a lyric of such intensity he squirmed like a Quaker

& gave himself over to the quiet history

of trees & ontology. All this he said while

patting me down, slapping first my ribs, then

sliding his palms along the sad, dark shell

of my body.

How lucky I was

spread-eagled at 13, discovering the ruinous cry

of insects as the night air flashed reds

& blues, as a lone voice chirped & cracked

over a radio; the city crumbling. We stood

a second longer sharing the deafening hum

of termites, back from their play & rest,

till he swung suddenly my right arm then my left.

Don Pullen at the Zanzibar Blue Jazz Café

Half-past eight Don Pullen just arrived

from Yellow Springs. By his side

is the African-Brazilian Connection.

If it were any later, another space,

say “Up All Night Movie Hour”

on Channel 7, he might have been

a cartel leader snorting little mountains

of cocaine up his mutilated nostrils

from behind his bureau as he buries

a flurry of silver-headed bullets

into the chests of the good guys:

an armlock M-16 in his right hand,

a sawed-off double barrel shotgun

in his left, his dead blond

girlfriend oozing globules of blood

by the jacuzzi. No one could be cooler

balancing all those stimulants. No one.

She said she couldn’t trust me,

that her ladybugs were mysteriously

disappearing, that I no longer

sprinkle rose petals in her bath,

that some other woman left a bouquet

of scented lingerie and a burning

candelabra on our doorstep, that she

was leaving, off to France—

the land of authentic lovers. In this club

the dim track lights reflecting off

the mirror where the bottles are lined

like a firing squad studying their targets

make the ice, stacked on top of ice,

very sexy, surprisingly beautiful & this

is my burden, I see Beauty in everything,

everywhere. How can one cringe upon

hearing of a six-year-old boy snatched

from a mall outside of London, two

beggarly boys luring him to the train

tracks with a bag of popcorn only to beat

his head into a pulp of bad cabbage!

Even now, I can smell them

holding his hand promising

Candyland in all its stripes & chutes.

Nine-fifteen, Don & the African-

Brazilian have lit into Capoiera.

The berimbau string stings my eyes

already blurring cognac, my eyes

trying to half-see if that’s my muse

sitting up front, unrecognizable,

a blue specter. Don’s wire fingers

scrape the ivory keys, off-

rhythm. It doesn’t matter, the Connection

agrees there’s room as they sway

& fall against the ceiling, a band

of white shadows wind-whipped

on a clothesline. Don’s raspy hands—

more violent than a fusillade of autumn

leaves pin-wheeling like paper rain

over East River Drive in blazing reds

& yellows—hammer away, shiver in

monstrous anarchy. Don’s arms arch like

orange slices squirting on my mouth’s roof,

juice everywhere. His body swings up

off his haunches. The audience, surveying each

other’s emotions, feel the extensions; their

bodies meld against the walls, leaving

a funeral of fingerprints as they exhale back

to their seats. Ten minutes to twelve,

I’m waving a taxi through holes

in the rain. I will tell her about tonight,

tell her how a guy named Don & his crew

The Connection hacked harmonies,

smashed scales, pulverized piano keys,

all in rhythm as each brutal chord

exploded in a moment’s dawning.