Make-Believe

Somewhere between here and Louisiana, I changed

Clothes, each quarter I counted and counted on gone.

Women carry cartons and kegs, bananas and eggs.

I only need sugar, some smokes, a can of Coke

To get through the margins where I write,

Metaphor = tenor + vehicle, for children who beg

To touch my hair and ask if I play basketball.

Tomorrow, I will explain the word brother

Is how we once knew black as someone

Frowns, raising his freckled hand: So, you don’t

Have a brother? Milk warms behind me. Babies

Begin to cry. I dig again, this time coming back

With lint. I am not a liar, I tell the cashier. The next

Day to my students I’ll say, No, I don’t have a brother

In the world. Myth is not make-believe. My

Mother and father had only one son. This,

My brother, is a metaphor. I am the tenor.

Brother is how you get to me if you are black

And you leave Louisiana and you lose what little

Tender you thought you had to spend, broke

With a line to remember, people who need to eat.