Untitled: On the Bus

(A) Black men (man) glance (s)
at each other (me)
then quickly look (s) away.

A quick check (-ing out),
a look to size (each other) up
the situation:

friend or foe or neutral (neither)
brother (Family) or enemy,
sane (or high) or not.

Does he (I) know
(or doesn’t know)
(or doesn’t want to know)
what it means to be
(or doesn’t want to be)
a Black Man here.

Mirror or blank wall?
The same or (somehow)
Different?

Does he hurt
(others)?

Does he hurt
(himself)?

Does he hurt
(also)?

Taboo

After
the reading
sipping
Donated Wine
from tiny plastic cups

sampling prosciutto,
celery,
baby carrots,
and little nibbly things
on toothpicks

our small talk turns
to food.
Someone asks:
What’s your favorite cheese?

. I don’t know many cheeses beyond
. Yellow, Kraft, and Gubmint.

I shrug and blurt out
Swiss?

To an awkward silence.

Humiliated
by charcuterie

as if I’d
. shown my paycheck,
. ripped off my clothes,
. told her what I really did over the weekend.

. . Revealed where I grew up.

“All I have to do is Stay Black and Die”
which is easy, I mean just look:

here I am, still one of “Ellen’s Black Children”
according to elder members on that side

of the family

. (of my family?)

The world reminds me
that I’m Black everyday

with furtive and not-so-furtive glances,
stares, empty seats beside me . thanks for that, BTW!

Inhaled breath, hardened looks,
feigned indifference,

Women: Too fearfully apologetic with I’m sorry
. After bumping into me

Men: Too brusquely dismissive with Sorry
. After bumping into me (if they say anything at all)

or just plain not seeing me
when I pass by.

Or

The chin up, the head nod, the softly spoken What up?
is proof of my Blackness.
. Also: when people who look like me
. look at me . as if I were . everything that they too
. have heard about . people who look like me
. is true – . of ME but not of them.

I could go on

. And as for death –
no need to explain how easy that is
to Trayvon, to George, Breonna, Eric,
to Ta’Kiya outside Kroger’s,
Sonya and her lethal pot of water,
dear sweet Elijah,
or even Eleanor Bumpers,
or Henry Dumas.

I could go on.

I could go back further.

I could go back even further.

I could go on.

I could go on forever.

Born in Annapolis, Maryland, and raised in Baltimore, Reginald Harris was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award for his first book, 10 Tongues, and won the 2012 Cave Canem / Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize for Autogeography. His writings have appeared in numerous journals, anthologies, and online including The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, The Hopkins Review, Poetry, Verse Daily, and the anthologies Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem’s First Decade, and This is the Honey: An Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets. He is a Lead Digital Navigator for the Brooklyn Public Library in New York.

Featured image “Baltimore, Maryland’s Domino Sugar Sign At Night.” Uploaded by David Robert Crews to be licensed via creative commons 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.