Pride(36)

I pull out three more books; one of them is a poetry collection by Langston Hughes, and I read in his bio that this place is named for him because he was a busboy and a poet. I swim in his words until a voice talks over a microphone somewhere in another part of the restaurant. “Good afternoon, and welcome to Busboys and Poets!” he says. A few voices cheer.

My belly twists and my heart races, because time has slipped from me. I dig into my bag for my phone and see that it’s five o’clock already. My bus leaves at seven. I’ll need to get to the station in an hour, but I still have time to see what all this noise is about. I follow the voice that says he’ll be inviting poets up to the stage in just a few minutes and advises anyone who wants to sign up to do so now, before they close the list.

My belly knots again, because his words are a command. There’s no one here who knows me. There’s no one from the hood who’ll spread a rumor about me getting on the mic to spit some corny rhyme about love or the hood or my sisters. The last time I shared my poems in public was for the after-school performance in June, and even that was only for the kids who had taken that poetry class.

“Thank you all for coming out,” the man continues. “We’ll be featuring some local teen poets who were part of the Poetry Out Loud summer workshops. So give ’em a round of applause, y’all.”

I walk to a separate part of the bookstore, where there’s a restaurant, a small stage, and a black man wearing a bow tie. I only stand there and watch the people. It’s mostly teens, all right. And I almost think of backing out. Strangers or not, and whether it’s D.C. or Bushwick, I know kids my age can be brutal. Still, I’m drawn to the mic.

“But first let’s get some of you young people to bless this mic,” the man says.

There’s a girl standing by the stage holding a clipboard. There’s a short line, about five teenagers who walk up to her and sign up for the open mic. So I’m the sixth. Some people stare at me, I stare back. Others glance—I ignore them.

I write ZZ on a line, and I take a seat in a corner in the back of the room. A waitress comes to take my order. I have fourteen dollars left after I paid to get to the Howard campus, so I just ask for water.

Those few minutes before my name gets called go by like honey dripping from a spoon. And after each poet goes up, who are all just okay, the man finally calls my name. My heart doesn’t race, my palms are not sweaty. I’m as cool as a snow cone.

The clapping is what gets me up from off my seat and adds the rhythm to my slow walk toward the small stage, up the short flight of steps, behind the microphone, and into the limelight. I begin to speak.

Girls in the Hood

Step onto my block

and walk these jagged

broken streets

and sidewalk cracks

like rickety bridges across our backs

to the ends of rainbows

reflecting off broken glass

where the pot of gold

is way on the other side

of this world.

So we hood girls

shout our pain

into the megaphone wind

hoping that it will carry

our dreams

to sky-scraping rooftops

with radio towers

broadcasting our tongue clicking,

smack talking, neck rolling

hip swaying, finger snapping sass through telephone-wire

jump ropes while we skip to the beat

of our own songs and count out

the seconds, minutes, hours, days

until we break past these invisible walls

where glass ceilings are so high,

we only look up and never scratch the surface with airbrushed and gel-tipped manicured nails hoping that maybe

the stars will reach down

instead and want to touch us too.

My pulse races, and I can hear everyone start clapping. I can feel that my words have earned me respect. Just like when Papi sits with his homies on the stoop to predict a politician’s next move, theorize some foreign country’s strategy, or know who’s about to have beef with who on the block weeks before something goes down. He drops knowledge just as he’s slapping down a set of cards or a domino onto a table, and his homies can’t do anything but bow down to his greatness and keep their mouths shut.

And I’m sure that’s what everybody does as they applaud and cheer. That’s when I know that this place can be an extension of my block too, like home.

I let myself get showered with applause and cheers before I open my eyes again. And when I do, they land on a familiar face. That’s when my stomach sinks. My breath quickens, and I’m frozen there on the stage even as the audience stops applauding and the man calls for the next poet to come up.

Darius Darcy is looking directly at me.





Sixteen


THE WORDS WHAT the hell is he doing here? play over and over in my mind. He’s just standing there in the back of the room with his hands in his tight pants pockets. The late-afternoon sunlight shines on the side of his face, making him almost glow. We both have lights shining down on us as if we’re the only ones in here.

Someone comes over to touch my arm, and I finally look away and step down from the stage. I almost don’t know where to go, but then I remember I left my bag on the chair and I have to head over to where Darius is standing. I recognize one of the girls he’s with. Carrie. This is not how I expected my afternoon to go. At all. And Darius just watched me perform? Oh, hell no.