Poetry: How to Play Dead (Again) by Brittny Ray Crowell
A poem for your body, Brittny Ray Crowell’s “How to Play Dead (Again)” invites you to perform power over the power of death itself (employed as it is by the racial caste system to kill in infinite ways and leave you standing).
How to Play Dead (Again)
Inspired by Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl.” Dedicated to Charleston (amend as necessary).
I.
beware of “black” suffixes
restrict your syllables
like haiku
name the child so they bear witness
to words planted against
them like a rancid kiss
lest your children
become the sluts or thugs
they believe
we are so bent
on becoming
II.
lame your violent tongues
cripple your swarthy mouths
even your silence
is angry—
cloak and bind the swell
of your ripe teeming bodies
but not before the tableau—
hold a covetous pose
to be shattered, then mimicked
nod in awe of your redacted image
smile wide—prove you are not dangerous
—bring the corners of your broad mouth in tight
display a great lunette
of moon varnished teeth
make your eyes soft
and vacant though they are dark
III.
bow
your head.
offer the swirling dark
serifs of your temples
the grapevines of your dark
thistled “kitchen” above
your neck—tilt
your eyes to earth
make yourself still
pretend that you are willing
discomfort is rude and dangerous
better petted than bruised
laugh
at your own expense
IV.
learn to carry your eyes
like hail storms, your throat
a tourniquet, running the chasms
of your noxious blood backward
swallow all the words
you want
to say but can’t
V.
hug no man/woman/child
you love for fear your arms
may crave embrace—pray
without getting shot
know there is no such play
as safe make yourself small
infinitesimal, fetal as a curl
reason with your scourge
pretend you know what it is
to be lovable
bounce a ball
gospel a song
VI.
make room for younger ancestors
this world is for those too old
for death’s childish palette
VII.
but what if I’m too dense to bow
too stubborn to swoon?
well—if all else fails, chile
—when they come for you
set a kettle—
hear the rising fume scream
imagine your courteous death
Brittny Ray Crowell
Brittny Ray Crowell is a native of Texarkana, TX. She received a B.A. in English from Spelman College, and an M.A. in English from Texas A&M-Texarkana. Her work has been published in The West Review, Glass Poetry Press, and the anthology Black Lives Have Always Mattered. Her work focuses on hidden mythologies of the contemporary South. She is currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Houston, where she serves as an Assistant Poetry Editor for Gulf Coast.
