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[Return to Guest Poets Page] [Next Page]Brandon D. Johnson
Brandon D. Johnson, originally from Gary, Indiana has lived in the Washington, DC. area for the past 20 years. He is a founding member of the Modern Urban Griots, a poetry and performance collective in the District of Columbia. He's performed at It's Your Mug, New York's Nuyorican Poet's Cafe, and the Whitney Museum, the Joaquin Miller Cabin Poetry Series, and the Grace Church Poetry Series. He received Honorable Mention and Third Place in poetry in the DC Commission on the Arts' Larry Neal Writers' Competition in 1996 and '97. During the summers of '97 and '98, he participated in the Cave Canem Workshop/Retreat, a program for African American Poets founded by Cornelius Eady and Toi Derricotte. Recently, Brandon was awarded a Fellowship Grant from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. He is author of the collection Man Burns Ant and co-author of The Black Rooster Social Inn: This is the Place. Plotters Based on a painting by Archibald Motley Reggie’s finger points at crooked lines on a piece of dirty paper. spent a week casin Miller’s Hardware like a fox hittin a henhouse. Chevis sit back, dumb as a bag of hammers, rememberin times with Black Jack’s boys chasin Villa round Mexico with a finger faster than his head. he pretends to know this caper’s take’ll make up for Peoria when that smartass teller flipped a switch. Black and Shug scan the room for folks payin too much attention, or conspicuously unconcerned. Mudflap burns a Cuban, studyin a newspaper like a paintin eyes perusin pages like it was that picture above his head like he’d see Jack Johnson knock Gentleman Jim out again. smoke snakes under bowler brims, searchin the felt for escape. Charnita weaves through the bar slow collectin eyes followin her hips like the ball in a movie singalong. a feathered stole chokes the chill from her throat. she give’em thick lips and long legs curvin like a chair leg her layin down red heels like blood puddles. her blue coat can’t hide the bundle of butt she took small pains to conceal, or reveal to the right man but there ain’t none, cause she the kind of woman crooks avoid like sticky money, bad getaway cars and white citizens. Reggie’s eyes try to warn her away before she get to the table, but every look is a come-on a good reason for gettin close to somebody. this ain’t no time for social talkin, but Charnita ignores all signals and good sense. the others don’t see her till she too close not to hear their plan. she look at the table the map of the store. they straighten up. ten eyes work her body from leg to head admirin, desirin, despisin the interruption. nothin moves, like the whole room’s holdin its breath except for a boa-feather fallin through the smoke bout to hit the ground loud as a shoe. Cool Uncle Bobbo’s ‘61 Deuce, all grille and fins, grinned down the road like a tiger high on last night’s gazelle. My cousins, Eric and Adrian, and I sat in the backseat anticipating ice cream cones. I was older and able to see out the windows without standing. My head was right next to the open window looking at places I’d rarely seen in town. Uncle Bobbo, Portia and Aunt Nat were perched in the front, deep in conversation too old to be worth a listen. They didn’t look back at us. The Tastee Queen driveway was lined with the back ends of some of the best cars outta Detroit, all as indistinct as any car in ‘62, except for the burgundy Chevy Impala, double rear antennas, skirted rear wheels, enough chrome for a blind man to see in moonlight, sitting in the back of the lot. "Thas Lester!" Portia’s whole face was an emergency. She knew that was her husband’s car, with him in it, sitting close to another woman. "No, it’s not!" my uncle said, unconvincingly. "Yes, it is!" I said, chin toward them, putting all the familiar symbols together to conclude that that was my next door neighbor, the cool dude with the Kangol and that sharp car, RIGHT THERE, thirty feet from my see-all-evil-eyes. "NO, IT’S NOT!" Bobbo and Nat double-barreled disapproval my way, their eyes large as the "O’s" on a fifty foot Kool’s Menthol billboard. I shut up. It was so final that I can’t remember if we stayed at the Tastee Queen, or not. The next day my mother said, "Bran, sometimes when adults say things, you should just listen." She said nothing else. I guess she knew I was smart enough to connect the "O’s" and learn. I didn’t say a thing. I was practicing being cool. betting dad all i see is the bottoms of bare feet out of reach up the broad gray trunk branches yielding to his strangling limbs. the tree groans as my father digs heels and toes into crevasses ants use as pathways. bark cracks drops around my feet as from a glass tower pummelled by summer storms. he beats the tree like all things that rise above a boy’s understanding of earth life the mathematical odds of surviving in a world that will not wait for me to grow. i watch him chagrined and fearful of his hold on this behemoth. i want him back to ground to safety. i'm willing to lose anything but him to the tree the yawning sky's jaws but he digs toes into crackling growth as carefully down as up. i didn’t know how much money i’d lost until he and i talked about calculating one cent doubled every day for thirty. you don’t want to know. but eight-year-old me hadn’t learned never bet your father and never bet a country-boy that he can’t climb a tree barefoot. Copyright © 1999. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Duplication of this poetry and/or art without permission of the author/artist is forbidden under copyright law. Please ask permission if you wish to use for non-commercial purposes
Tuesday, July 11, 2000 |