Still…In 2 It
M. Abduh

In my forthcoming collection, All the Stars Aflame, I have something of an ode to graffiti: a poem entitled “Burner.” It opens, “If crumbling concrete was your only canvas…” The story of ghetto youth. Those who made something from nothing. Graffiti gave us an outlet, a way to express ourselves. & for me, at that time, writing on walls was more important than writing in school notebooks. It was the closest community of writers I’ve ever known. Old heads mentored us & would scrutinize our work closer than any Comp teacher. I can hear my uncle now, “What’s up with them skinny E’s? & why would you put a shadow on both sides of the letter?”

Last weekend, I saw the unthinkable: whole car pieces on a New York City subway train. This made me go back to look at photos of old pieces & reread the biography of a style master, Brooklyn native Dondi White. As a graffiti writer, his work was flawless. His skills were unrivaled. Most writers did top-to-bottom pieces standing on a subway platform, so they could get the letters straight and proportioned. But, as one of Dondi’s fellow writers said, “This man did it two feet away from the train. That is remarkable. You cannot top that. I don’t care if you’re Picasso. I don’t care who you are. You cannot top that. When you can’t see what you’re doing until [the train] is running.”

What’s more, he did this under the cover of night with transit cops all over.

Stories drew me to graffiti. It was the same with Dondi. He told stories with Pilot markers & Rusto spray cans on everything that stood or rolled around New York City, & as his brother Michael White said of him, “He was an extraordinary storyteller.”

By the early 80’s, he moved from trains to canvases, from tunnels to galleries & was one of the first writers to have a one man show in Europe.

Dondi died from complications of AIDS in 1998. & though his work is long gone from MTA lines, many sketches, collages, & photos of his paintings remain.

“Burner” is for Dondi & every graff writer who went down into a subway tunnel, racked spray cans from a hardware store, & tagged walls, lampposts, & mailboxes. It’s for those still…in 2 it.

Please visit https://gfbpublishing.org/shop/ols/products/pre-order-all-the-stars-aflame-by-malik-abduh to preorder this forthcoming collection from Get Fresh Books.

In his debut collection, All the Stars Aflame, Malik Abduh relates the brutal legacy of U.S. racial violence, including lynchings, riots, uprisings, & political assassinations, told in the voices of those who experienced these tragedies firsthand. Likewise, Abduh chronicles his own life experiences: sneaking as a young boy to listen to Richard Pryor records, lamenting the gentrification of his old neighborhood, & struggling to build his daughter a doll house. Thus, this volume is a balance between historical record & personal narrative. Rich with vivid imagery, tragic irony, & dark humor, All the Stars Aflame is a timely poetic debut.

Don’t Be Like Cy
By M. Abduh

Over winter break, I decided to read all the plays in August Wilson’s Century Cycle. But between finishing Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and starting Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, I came across the playwright’s one man show, How I Learned What I Learned. (As a longtime admirer of his work, I was embarrassed to know nothing of the play.) It was co-conceived by Wilson’s longtime assistant Todd Kreidler, who said that it is the closest thing to a memoir the playwright left— something of an origin story.

The play, which Wilson originally performed on stage before he took ill, transports us from Spear, North Carolina in the 1930’s to Pittsburgh’s Hill District in the 1960’s. Always the master dramatist and storyteller, Wilson connects several incidents (and accidents) from his childhood and young adulthood to relate the experiences of an unforgettable life. He falls in love. He witnesses a man killed. He is jailed for taking a lawyer’s advice. He stares down the barrels of a shotgun while on a date with a woman named Snookie. The play has irony, humor, and plenty of wisdom. One of the great wisdoms of the play is “don’t be like Cy.” One night, Cy Morocco, a wannabe musician, invited Wilson to hear him play at the Aurora club: “Hey, August man, you going to come down and hear me play?” Wilson agreed, but was surprised to find out that Cy played the sax. He was even more surprised when he arrived at the club and heard Cy playing—or, as Wilson puts it, heard him “making a lot of noise.” It turned out Cy didn’t play the sax after all. From this, Wilson learned an important life lesson: “August,” he said to himself, “you want to be a writer, right? Learn how to do it. Don’t be like Cy.”

Unfortunately, I was unable to unearth a recording of Wilson’s performance. I would love to have seen him on the stage with nothing but a desk, a stool, a coat rack, a copy of Webster’s Third New International Dictionary—and his words. And while this play is not as well-known as Fences or Seven Guitars or The Piano Lesson, it is equally important. It is a glimpse into the people and places that inspired his characters, dialogue, settings. It is the portrait of an artist as a young man and the crucible in which his body of work was forged.

Please visit https://platformreview.org/poetry/ to read the latest issue of Platform Review.

Marvelous One
By M. Abduh

“If they cut my bald head open, they will find one big boxing glove.” —Marvelous Marvin Hagler

To be honest, I rooted for Sugar Ray Leonard. After Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray was my favorite fighter. He had all the gifts: fast hands, quick feet, enormous heart. But I also had love & the upmost respect for Marvelous Marvin Hagler, like all boxing people I knew. But before his fight with Leonard—& certainly after it—Hagler felt anything but loved or respected: “What do I have to do to get the recognition?” he said in an interview. “Do I have to kill someone?” (He even legally changed his name to Marvelous Marvin Hagler, so announcers would be forced to call him “Marvelous.”) Nevertheless, throughout his career, he earned his respect. A three-round war with Tommy Hearns & an epic battle with John “The Beast” Mugabi are but two examples of why Marvelous Marvin Hagler is universally revered.

Born in Newark, New Jersey, Hagler’s family moved to Brockton, Massachusetts in 1967, after the Newark rebellion. At the time, Brockton was known for another fighter. It was the birthplace of former heavyweight champion Rocky Marciano. Hagler started boxing around 1969 in a gym owned by the Petronelli brothers, Pat & Goody, who became his handlers. Hagler turned pro in 1973. After going unbeaten in his first three years, (including a draw on November 26, 1974, with the other Sugar Ray—Sugar Ray Seales), his first loss came at the hands of Bobby “Boogaloo” Watts on January 13, 1976. Then he lost to Willie “The Worm” Monroe on March 9, 1976, both at the Spectrum in Philadelphia. He would go on to avenge both losses & would not lose again until April 6, 1987. A loss he would not avenge.

A southpaw who could also fight orthodox, Hagler’s style was relentless. He walked down opponents & worked nonstop. He always entered the ring in top form, a result of his rigorous training regimen. Former heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis said that Hagler “was the one I emulated my own training camps after, when I saw how seriously he took training camps.” Hagler was so feared, he did not get a title shot until 1979 against middleweight champ Vito Antuofermo—after fifty-three fights. Former heavyweight champion Smokin’ Joe Frazier explained why Hagler had such a hard time getting a title shot: “You’re black, you’re southpaw, & you’re good,” he said. And although he got his shot that night in Las Vegas, he did not get his belt. The bout ended in a controversial draw, with Antuofermo retaining the title. Hagler would later say that this fight taught him not to leave things in the hands of judges. He would instead “destruct & destroy” with his own hands.

Hagler finally became world champion on September 27, 1980 after defeating Alan Minter in Wembley Arena. With a third round TKO, he won the WBA, WBC, & Ring middleweight titles. Before the fight, Minter was quoted as saying that he did “not intend to lose his title to a Black man.” The audience that night had similar intentions. After Hagler dispatched Minter in three rounds, the crowd hurled beer bottles into the ring. Hagler had to be surrounded by cornermen, then by bobbies, & rushed to safety. & while he did not get to hold up his new belts in the ring, he was the undisputed middleweight champion of the world, a title he would successfully defend for the next seven years, completely dominating the division—until he faced Sugar Ray Leonard.

It was touted as a dream fight. “War II,” Hagler called it. After visiting both camps, HBO sportscaster Barry Tompkins said that “if looks win fights, then this fight is dead even. Both of them look ready, right now.” Before the fight, Leonard said that the first round was important. He needed to get off to a fast start & get Hagler‘s respect. Hagler, to the surprise of many, started the fight in the orthodox stance (even though Leonard had been struggling with southpaws throughout training camp), while Leonard tiptoed around every inch of the 20-foot ring. Leonard took the first round. Moving well & clinching often, he took second round as well. Those first two rounds would prove pivotal to the judge’s decision. Leonard went on to win the early rounds. Hagler took the middle rounds. Hagler was more aggressive, but Leonard was able to stay on his bicycle & throw enough flurries to outscore Hagler. After a close fight, announcer Chuck Hull read the decision: “The winner by split decision &…new middleweight champion of the world: Sugar Ray Leonard! (The judges scored the fight 118-110, 115-113, & 113-115.) A visibly stunned & incredulous Hagler continued to shake his head and repeat that he won the fight, that he had been robbed by the judges. He was not alone in his opinion. Over the years, many fight fans & boxing experts have expressed their belief that Hagler indeed won the fight. But as I said that night to my father, & have repeated ever since, the fight was so close I could see it going either way. But “robbed” Hagler was not.

Unfortunately, this would be Hagler‘s final fight. After Leonard denied him a rematch & a chance to even the score, Hagler retired. He left the States for Italy & remained there for many years, becoming something of an action film star. He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1993, finishing his career at 62-3-2, 52 KO’s. Like his fighting style, Hagler’s road to the middleweight crown was hardscrabble, but he reigned atop the division for years, successfully defending his title twelve times. Ring magazine, the “Bible of Boxing,” named him the fourth greatest middleweight in history.

After news of his death on Sunday, tributes poured in from the boxing world. Former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson tweeted: Marvin Hagler was one of the best warriors in the sport. Condolences to his family.  He will be missed. Promoter Bob Arum said of him, “He was a man of honor & a man of his word, & he performed in the ring with unparalleled determination. He was a true athlete & a true man.” As for his old nemesis, Sugar Ray Leonard tweeted, You are definitely gone too soon. But you will forever live on as one of the greats. Marvin Hagler was indeed one of the greatest, the epitome of skill, pride, grit, determination, & heart. In a word, he was Marvelous.

By M. Abduh

The distinction of August Wilson’s work lies not in the epic, but in the everyday. As one producer put it, “[Wilson] was not drawn to writing about big, historical events. I don’t think he was ever gonna put Frederick Douglass on the stage.” Instead, he peopled his plays with garbagemen, trumpet players, and cab drivers. As Wilson deeply understood and appreciated the will and resolve of these uncelebrated men and women who somehow survived the terror of the cudgel, the noose, and the shotgun; who somehow migrated north, made homes, and raised families in the teeth of contract lenders and redliners. He felt no need to put Douglas on the stage because “I happen to think,” he said in an introductory note to Seven Guitars, “that the content of my mother’s life—her myths, her superstitions, her prayers, the contents of her pantry, the smell of her kitchen, the song that escaped from her sometimes parched lips, her thoughtful repose and pregnant laughter—are all worthy of art.” He elucidates this beautifully in his Honorary Doctorate acceptance speech at Howard University:

I am standing here in my grandfather’s shoes. They are large shoes. They are the shoes of a whole generation of men who left a life of unspeakable horror in the South and came north, searching for jobs and a way to live life with dignity and whatever eloquence the heart can call upon. They came from the cotton fields of Georgia and Arkansas and Mississippi, from the chain gangs of Alabama, from the cane fields of Louisiana, and in my grandfather’s case, from the tobacco fields of North Carolina. They came carrying Bibles and guitars. Marked men seeking a way of bludgeoning and shaping the malleable parts of themselves into a new identity as free men of definite and sincere worth. They brought with them manners and a way of life that corresponded to their temperament and sensibilities. And it is this field of manners and rituals of social intercourse, out of which I make my art.

So, while Shakespeare wrote of kings, Wilson wrote of kinfolk:

Bynum Cutler.
Savage, mule trainer, singer,
shaper of wood and iron.

“This is a poem I wrote for my grandfather,” he said of these lines. “Since I never knew my grandfather, I am speaking in a generational sense, a generational grandfather. This is your grandfather, my grandfather, all of us’s grandfather.” Thus, his plays and poetry sprung from his mother’s kitchen, from his grandfather’s shoes—as noble as anything written for or about any king.

“But why don’t you start with your grandmother and work your way back to Timbuktu, so you can understand who you are?

Wilson wanted audiences to know that these were not small lives. Through them, we are wedded to the glorious past. When his daughter went off to Morgan State University, she joined a student organization. “We’re studying about Timbuktu,” she called and told him. “That’s good,” he replied. “But why don’t you start with your grandmother and work your way back to Timbuktu, so you can understand who you are? And if you want to get your connection with Timbuktu, you got to go through your grandmother—and you’ll get to Timbuktu and the great empires of Africa…but you’ll also know better who you are having made that journey.” Thus, we not only come from a handful of kings and queens, but from millions of folk who crossed oceans, rebelled against enslavers, sang the blues, fried okra, pitched horseshoes, and spoke the poetry of the Mississippi Delta, the Hill District in Pittsburgh, and the Southside of Chicago. The poetry Wilson put in the mouths of everyday people like Levee, Rose Maxson, Berniece, and King Hedley II. All of whom are worthy of art.

No Racist
By M. Abduh

“In a racist society it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist.” — Angela Y. Davis

IT WAS MY FIRST ENGLISH HONORS CLASS, all-white, all-American. I was a grad school TA, and, like my classroom, I was the only black face in the program. Once I saw the demographics, I knew my chosen theme, 20^th Century African American Writing, would make for an interesting semester. Surprisingly, only two students dropped the course the first week. One asked to be excused to use the bathroom and hasn’t been heard from since. But the rest stayed and seemed somewhat interested in the coursework. Though, I wondered how many more would drop after reading about “the blue-eyed devil” in early chapters of the Autobiography of Malcolm X. It couldn’t, however, be any worse than all the times I had to read the word “nigger” up and down the pages of Faulkner and O’Connor. (When you’re the only black student, somehow you become the designated reader of Southern Gothic literature.) I could hear the questions already, “Why is he calling us devils?” Nevertheless, the class was treated to what I believe was a stellar reading list: Hughes, Hurston, Morrison, Ellison. And while I have come to expect that students will rarely recognize many of the writers on my syllabi, sometimes their lack of recognition is implausible.

“Have you guys ever heard of Eldridge Cleaver?”
“The peanut guy?” a student said.
“No,” I replied, and thought, Carver. Cleaver. An honest mistake. “Ralph Ellison?”

More stares. Again, I can’t completely blame them. These students attended schools where these writers were not taught, lived in homes where their books were never read. They do not know them because they were not expected to. “You don’t know Ellison?” I repeated. “You’ve never heard of Invisible Man?”

“Oh yeah,” a student replied, “it was a black and white movie, right? We watched some of it in high school.”

After clarifying the difference between Invisible Man and Wells’s The Invisible Man, I gave them a brief biography of Ellison, in particular his days hanging out in Harlem working on what would be his classic novel. I then assigned them his essay “What America Would Be Like Without Blacks” to read for the next class. Before concluding, I asked if there were any questions. One student wondered if we would be reading anything by Stephen King. I replied that, unfortunately, we would not.

“Come on, professor, I love Stephen King.
“You have seen the syllabus, haven’t you?” I replied.
“Yeah, of course.”
“You do realize that the course title is 20^th Century African American Writing, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And you’ve seen Stephen King?”
“Yeah?”
“You do realize he isn’t—African-American?”
“Wait, but isn’t that racist?”
Le sigh.

I took a moment to explain that focusing on writers who are often excluded from the literary canon is not racist, but antiracist

I took a moment to explain that focusing on writers who are often excluded from the literary canon is not racist, but antiracist. I then asked him how many writers of color he had read in high school. He thought for a moment, long enough that I wondered if he had forgotten the question: “Well, not many,” he said, “but I think that’s because our school wanted us to learn proper English.” He ran his finger across the syllabus as if he was attempting to rub something from the page. “Don’t a lot of these writers use Ebonics?” Immediately, Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue,” came to mind: There are Englishes, not one English, I thought, certainly not a proper one. I knew the kind of discussion this needed, and I knew we were not, in those few moments, going to reach Dr. King’s Promised Land. So, I ended the session by asking him to at least read Ellison’s essay with a close eye and an open mind.

***

I began the next session by asking the class what they thought of Ellison’s piece. A student named Jordan dove right in: “I think black people should stop complaining. I mean, that’s the only way we’ll get rid of racism.” I asked if he thought millions of enslaved blacks were emancipated because they stopped complaining; if not complaining had desegregated buses or prevented lynchings. I attempted to clarify that the complaining he spoke of, the lamenting, came only “after affliction and harsh labor,” as the prophet Jeremiah once put it.

And if complaining necessitated a one way passage back to the Motherland, when slaves revolted, poisoned food, tried to escape, and refused to work, why didn’t slave masters say, “If you don’t like it here, you can go back where you came from”?

Another student raised her hand. “I disagree with Jordan,” she said. Her objection was welcome. I was heartened that there was at least one voice of reason in the class. She put both hands on her lap and looked her interlocutor in the eye. “The only way to remove racism from America,” she said, “is if the blacks go back to Africa.” Back to Africa?  If complaining necessitated a one way passage back to the Motherland, when slaves revolted, poisoned food, tried to escape, and refused to work, why didn’t slave masters say, “If you don’t like it here, you can go back where you came from”? “Are ‘Middle American’ complainers also leaving?” I asked. It still amazes me that many whites forget that their families, too, came here across oceans, past the tiring arm of Lady Liberty, reeling under the weight of that torch—those “huddled masses” who landed on Ellis Island many years after blacks had been brought here in chains. But before I could utter a word, she cut me off: “I mean, don’t get me wrong—I’m not racist.” And it hit me, like an LAPD nightstick: no matter how racist a person may act, no matter how many confederate flags they fly, all they have to do to remove every racist bone from their body is to punctuate the act with “no racist.” Picture James Earl Ray sitting in his cell lying on his bunk reminiscing, “Yeah, I blew that nigger’s dream right out of his head. No racist.”

In fact, the “R-word” has become the worst thing you can call a person. In an appearance on HBO’s live talk show Real Time, host Bill Maher asked guest Chris Rock about Michael Richard’s 2006 onstage N-word implosion, “Do you think he’s actually a racist, Chris?” Maher asked. Rock paused and replied, “Well he screamed nigger over and over again in a crowded room. What do you have to shoot Medgar Evers to be a racist?” Byron De La Beckwith must be turning in his grave. How dare Chris Rock call him the R-word. Some would even argue that this makes Rock the real racist. Segregationist and former Alabama Governor George Wallace would have been one of them. In 1968, he was asked if he thought himself a racist. He replied, “I don’t regard myself as a racist, and I think the biggest racists in the world are those who call other folks racists. I think the biggest bigots in the world are those who call other folks bigots.” This from the same man who famously said, “Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever! No racist.”

Dr. Laura Schlessinger can sympathize. Here is a woman who said nigger so many times in an interview, it sounded like she was reading from a Mark Twain novel. And when a number of African Americans took offense and called her the R-word, she went on Larry King and said her 1^st Amendment rights were being violated, because while you may not have the right to yell fire in a crowded theater, you most certainly can yell nigger. Schlessinger let the audience know, in no uncertain terms, that she’s no one’s racist—no matter what niggers say. “Black people need to stop being so hypersensitive,” she told King. This from the same Dr. Schlessinger who was sensitive about people calling her the R-word.

George W. Bush can relate. When asked to think back on the highs and lows of his presidency, he said the lowest point was when Kanye West called him a racist. Really? Not when they threw shoes at him or called him an oil-thieving Blackwater pimp? No, Kanye West calling him the R-word was the low point of his presidency. If only, flying over those poor, black victims of Katrina, he had said the magic words, “No racist,” the world would have known that he actually did care about Black people.

This is the wet nurse of birtherism.

I explained to this student, to Jordan, to the class, the racist nature of telling blacks to “go back to Africa,” that it means they don’t truly belong here, that they are not truly of this land. This is the wet nurse of birtherism. I then referred them to the statement of actor and activist Paul Robeson, for whom the library we were sitting in is named: “My father was a slave and my people died to build this country, and I’m going to stay right here and have a part of it, just like you.” Then I turned to Ellison’s essay to further clarify Robeson’s point. There is no America without blacks: no Faulkner, no Yale accent, no jazz (or blues or hip hop), no southern cuisine, no slave economy. This began to get their attention. “Well, what do you think it would be like, professor?” Jordan asked. I leaned back in my seat, rubbing my beard. “A lot of pot roast and polka,” I said. “No racist.”

Swing Wide the Gates
By M. Abduh

In his seminal essay, The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin clarifies the force of love: “[I]f love will not swing wide the gates, no other power will or can.” The love Baldwin describes should not be confused with shallow sentimentality, emotional bosh, or an “infantile American sense of being made happy.” For none of these have ever even cracked open the gates. The love he describes is the same one that saw a people across oceans, saw them through whips and shackles, through nooses and hoses, through guns and cages. It is the love Baldwin puts in the mouth of Sharon Rivers in If Beale Street Could Talk: “Love brought you here,” she tells her frightened daughter. “If you trusted love this far, don’t panic now.” Though I am not sure many people trust it much anymore. (There is so much not to trust.) But somehow filmmaker Barry Jenkins remained faithful, and it brought him back to Beale Street, where, as Baldwin said, “every black person in America was born.”

“I hope nobody has ever had to look at anybody they love through glass.”

I cannot remember sitting in a theater and finding myself smiling at the screen. Perhaps it was the brilliant cinematography: the trailing overhead shot at the beginning of the film or the swirling smoke in one sculpture scene. Perhaps it was the lush colors: the yellow capes and coats, the red and black plaid lumber jackets, the green drapes. Or perhaps (more than likely) it was the way Tish and Fonny look at each other, on the train, at the restaurant, through two inches of glass, even as the cops, the judges, the laws—the lies—engulf them. And when Tish tells us, “I hope nobody has ever had to look at anybody they love through glass,” we learn the cost of that love and that look.

The beauty of the film is that it does not deal with love in the abstract. Love is Tish putting herself between Fonny and Officer Bell; it’s Sharon flying to Puerto Rico to find Fonny’s accuser, Victoria Rogers; it’s the young couple’s fathers, Frank and Joseph, hustling swag out of the back of a van to “save our children.” The kind of sacrifices families have had to make since the first ship landed at Port Comfort in 1619. This is why the film, like the novel, triumphs. Through Tish and Fonny and Sharon and Ernestine and Joseph and Frank, Baldwin swung wide the gates, and some forty-five years later, Jenkins walked right on through.

“Love is the most important subject in the history of humanity.”

Novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez once stated that “love is the most important subject in the history of humanity,” more important even than death. I am certain he meant love in all its types: eros, philia, storge, ludus, mania, pragma, philautia, agape. And without doubt, love is the most important subject in Beale Street. (Several songs in the soundtrack are aptly titled “Eros,” “Agape,” “Storge,” and “Philia.”) As the final scene fades to black, the words “For Jimmy” appear on the screen, and I smile again. This is a love letter, I say to myself. I could not help but imagine Jenkins finishing the novel for the first time, turning to the last page, and seeing the words “For Barry.” He must have found the novel a love letter, too.

In Memoriam
By M. Abduh

My first time seeing John Witherspoon was on Richard Pryor’s 1977 NBC comedy variety show. Witherspoon appeared in several skits on the show, as well as at a roast of Pryor that concluded the short-lived program. I was young, so my memories of him in the sketches are faint, but the roast remains vivid. “And you know what NBC means?” he asked the audience. “Nigger be careful.”

This, of course, was before Boomerang, the mushroom shirt, “Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!” and “You have to co-ordinate.” Before funking up the toilet in Friday: “Nobody go in the bathroom for thirty-five, forty-five minutes.” Before he was the Pops on the Wayans Bros. or Huey and Riley’s Granddad on The Boondocks. In other words, I’ve been tuning in to “Spoon” since I was a young buck, laughing at his many bit parts in films and on television for decades: films like Friday, ‪Black Dynamite‬, and ‪The Five Heartbeats‬; shows like Black Jesus, The Boondocks, and Martin. His catchphrases are some of the most memorable and oft-repeated lines in the culture. In short, he was one of the funniest, most impactful comedic performers to appear on any screen, big or small.

Comedian DL Hughley recently asked him how he lasted so long. The reason, he replied, is because “people come out to see this character…this dude who was very funny.” So funny, so significant, that no sequel, no reboot—not Last Friday, not The Boondocks—will be the same without him. His humor, his one-liners, his voice, his stories are irreplaceable.