The Interrogation

I. WHERE

In that world, I was a black man.

Now, the bridge burns and I

Am as absent as what fire

Leaves behind. I thought we ran

To win the race. My children swear

We ran to end it. I’d show them

The starting point, but no sky here

Allows for rain. The water infects

Us, and every day, the air darkens…

The air, the only black thing

Of concern—

Who cares what color I was?

 

II. CROSS-EXAMINATION

Do you mean love?

Certainly a way of loving.

Did it hurt?

When doesn’t it?

We’ll ask the questions. Did it hurt?

When death enters a child’s room,

The child feels a draft.

So you chose for it to hurt.

I chose my brother over my desire

To be invisible.

We thought your brother was dead…

He is.

And his death made you

Visible?

You only see me

When I carry a man on my back.

But you arrived alone.

That wasn’t me.

That was the man who lost

My brother.

 

III. STREET DIRECTIONS

Will black men still love me

If white ones stop wanting me

Dead? Will white men stop

Wanting me dead? Will men

Like me stop killing men like

You? Which made us brothers—

That you shielded my body

With yours or that you found

Me here, dying on the pavement,

And held my empty hand?

 

IV. REDIRECT

Tell us, then, how did that man lose your brother?

I imagine

I lost him in the fire.

The record suggests

You lost him to a bullet.

The record was written

In my first language. The bullet is

How I lost myself.

And this preoccupation with color,

Was that before or after you lost yourself?

The women who raised me referred to Jesus

As “our elder brother.”

And what about race?

What you call a color I call

A way.

Forgive us. We don’t mean to laugh.

It’s just that black is,

After all, the absence of color.

 

V. FAIRY TALE

Say the shame I see inching like steam

Along the streets will never seep

Beneath the doors of this bedroom,

And if it does, if we dare to breathe,

Tell me that though the world ends us,

Lover, it cannot end our love

Of narrative. Don’t you have a story

For me?—like the one you tell

With fingers over my lips to keep me

From sighing when—before the queen

Is kidnapped—the prince bows

To the enemy, handing over the horn

Of his favorite unicorn like those men

Brought, bought, and whipped until

They accepted their masters’ names.

 

VI. MULTIPLE-CHOICE

Metal makes for a chemical reaction.

Now that my wrists are cuffed, I am

Not like a citizen. What touches me

Claims contamination. What

A shame. A sham. When the police come

They come in steel boots. Precious

Metal. They want me kicked,

So kick me they do. I cannot say

They love me. But don’t they seek me out

As a lover would, each with both hands

Bringing me to my knees, under God,

Indivisible? I did not have to be born

Here. Men in every nation pray

And some standing and some flat

On their backs. Pray luscious

Silver. Pray Christmas. A chain

A chain. Even if it’s pretty. Even around

The neck. I cannot say what they love

Is me with a new bald fist in my mouth.

Pray platinum teeth. Show me

A man who tells his children

The police will protect them

And I’ll show you the son of a man

Who taught his children where

To dig. Not me. Couldn’t be. Not

On my knees. No citizen begs

To find anything other than forgiveness.

 

VII. LANDMARK

What Angel of Death flies by each house, waving

My brother’s soul in front of windows like a toy—

A masked, muscle-bound action figure with fists

We wanted when we were children—some light

Item, a hero our family could never afford?