Today we have a poem that really speaks to what our nation is going through, and what black people have to go through on a regular basis. We will take a look at Terrance Hayes's poem "Talk"
Link to his Bio: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/terrance-hayes
BPP Email: [email protected]
Transcription of the Poem:
Talk
like a nigger now, my white friend, M, said
after my M.L.K. and Ronald Reagan impersonations,
the two of us alone and shirtless in the locker room,
and if you're thinking my knuckles knocked
a few times against his jaw or my fingers knotted
at his throat, you're wrong because I pretended
I didn't hear him, and when he didn't ask it again,
we slipped into our middle school uniforms
since it was November, the beginning
of basketball season, and jogged out
onto the court to play together
in that vision Americans wish for
their children, and the point is we slipped
into our uniform harmony, and spit out GO TEAM!
our hands stacked on and beneath the hands
of our teammates and that was as close
as I may have come to passing for one
of the members of The Dream, my white friend
thinking I was so far from that word
that he could say it to me, which I guess
he could since I didn't let him taste the salt
and iron in the blood, I didn't teach him
what it's like to squint through a black eye,
and if I had to wonder if he would have grown
up to be the kind of white man who believes
all blacks are thugs or if he would have learned
to bite his tongue or let his belly be filled
by shame, but more importantly, would I be
the kind of black man who believes silence
is worth more than talk or that it can be
a kind of grace, though I'm not sure
that's the kind of black man I've become,
and in any case, M, wherever you are,
I'd just like to say I heard it, but let it go,
because I was afraid to lose our friendship
or afraid we'd lose the game -- which we did anyway.
