Contents
Smokey
LA Police Chief Daryl Gates Dead at 83
What Spells Trouble
Crips & Bloods
Delfonic
Somebody told me we got LA
Tar Baby
Prince George’s County
Line of Reason
Picturing My Father Running Anywhere (& For What?)
The Authority
How often I’ve turned to Latasha Harlins, who would have been 43 this July
Jailbird Blues
No More Birminghams
Midnight Special
The Snooty Fox
As in . . . Afro-Pessimism?
Dog Star Rising
Place Your Bets
Grief
On Becoming River Rat, Fat-Tongued and/or Finding Your Once Pretty Body at the Park, Full of Holes
Eye Witness
Other Women’s Children
Don’t Forget You(r) Lunch
Poem in which I Attempt to Explain to my Sons
What Was Ocean
The Whipping
The Wall
The Curiosities
Like a Natural Man
Worry the Rosemary
“Young Hearts, Run Free” (’76)
When Miss Lucy Sings
Black Dragons
This Bitter Earth
Nothing But a Man
Featuring Lonette Mckee as Sister
Fred Williamson Stars as “The Hammer”
Gator Purify
Black Dragons
Pacman
Another Epitaph for Nino
The Human Tornado
Raising Hell
Waiting
Priest and the Revolution
DeBarge
Mystery Woman Speaks 30 Years Later
Doo-Wop
Black Diaspora
Strawberry
Other Acts of Terror
The Midsection
If not as in a Wilderness, then
Women Named Barbara
Between Work
Estrella @ Noon
Affirmative Action Babies
Acknowledgments