Episode #087 REBROADCAST: How To Keep It Down - Justin Phillip Reed

REBROADCAST! In honor of Black History Month and because it's primary season and this incredible poem touches on presidential themes, we are rebroadcasting our episode about "How to Keep It Down / Throw It Off / Defer Until Asleep" by National Book Award winner Justin Phillip Reed.

Content Warning: Suicidality

Connor and Jack discuss a poem by this year's National Book Award winner for Poetry: Justin Phillip Reed. The poem, "How to Keep it Down / Throw It off / Defer Until Asleep," is from that award-winning collection, Indecency, published by Coffee House Press. We talk about the effects of the poem's shifting POV, the intersection of mental illness and white supremacy, and get to maybe two or three of the poem's nearly infinite layers on layers. Plus, Al Pacino makes a surprise cameo!

Read the poem below.

More on Justin Phillip Reed: www.justinphillipreed.com/

Check out his collection, Indecency, where this poem comes from: coffeehousepress.org/collections/po…ucts/indecency

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How to Keep it Down / Throw It off / Defer Until Asleep

by Justin Phillip Reed

My stomach imagines itself as an injury.

I steep ginger-mint tea in the

inauguration memorabilia mug from Momma,

monument-white but for Obama.

Between self-harm and my hand, I’ve rigged a list

of reliable illusions. This is the first

gesture. I am a gentle fist. My body

has been deboned of its irony.

My life wants to be proven

to. I didn’t check the list of Black church dead in Charleston

for friend or cousin

because this morning it was Thursday. Work was quiet

after I asked a white girl if she could quit

whispering—the hissing hit

his reddest venous notes until

a droning rain applauded. His ears ring full

of answers to his own knocking

when he’s home alone—i.e., almost always. Pacing

the apartment for a nest in which to

knuckle shut and wax unknown, he

statues and envisions

both spread hands rooting a brown expanse

into the kitchen floor’s glaucous linoleum,

and after, the image on Instagram

with heightened contrast, hashtagged emblem

etc, and producing this proof

would require one of his hands, and what if—

Nearby in the drying rack, a knife

shines. Impetuous.

And it occurs to you that this

occurring to you is a thinner ice

than most other Thurs-

days, is skin quickly shucked off a winter’s

lip. The hour itself murmurs

open better yet back like a hang

nail, as in persistent rawness and in the wrong

direction. You hunker the mug sternumwise—

it’s hot as a kind of heart meat but a blanched blues

—and mother your torso around it like a

matryoshka

mold, chest sickled over the steaming vent

that is the President’s head, though you pretend it isn’t.