Art Ticker

Justin Phillip Reed

Anesthesia is a Country You Leave for America

The tension in a St. Louis suburb following the shooting of an unarmed
African-American teenager by a police officer was thrown into stark relief
Sunday night in a video captured by CNN of a police officer yelling a
derogatory phrase at protesters.

“Bring it, all you fucking animals! Bring it!” the officer said in the exchange.

under a weight of slush-cold bodies
rutting, i drew breath: rancor.
the clamor of their anchors dragging

bottom, having spooned bare
with unchecked decadence my bowl
of raw sugar. at my nape, lips

about an anemic sucking maw
lubed in a just secretion smacked
[but listen, but] still. in the dream

i was blind and white as bone.
i appeared not quite picked clean,
not right until. the growls

serrated my stirring limbs.
the pristine teeth they were before
flesh fell deadish where i slept,

their whole heavy tongue slack
in my own throat, opiate-slow

 

|P|L|E|A|S|

what is the word for the realization that your language never loved you? you are a sad red thing, scattered / a map of

sacrificial fires /                      nightly appealing

where is that word?

it becomes necessary to signify the passing sound of friends who swear fidelity to oneself and in the same exchange refuse the weight of one’s brother’s body collapsed and dragged forward by its will to keep running. it becomes necessary to signify the smear, the oil of him slicked across blacktop, how at night he disperses in shine and gas. you think the word is [lapse]: the illusion to which one clings to keep from being both crazy and american, disrupted. glitch and pixel — the eternally loading screen that is blackness waiting to be called other than absence of. lapse / lap, where for the mother is a sign of the child having lived.

maybe one’s friends cannot exist within the glitch.

there are lapses of justice / of memory / of time before the body is covered / before those left to mourn lapse into savagery, which the friends say they (just) cannot abide.

 

Lookin Ass (White Burb Conscience Remix ft. Ebola)

Look at yall Guinea pig nigg—s
rollin over, shit-side-of-the-sty-ass nigg—s
(All I know is there should be no
Nigg—, nigg—.
reason)
Look at yall diarrhea-stained,
brown shame, magnified-mark-o-Cain-ass nigg—s
(All I know is there should be no
Nigg—, nigg—,
reason)
Look at yall dyin for attention,
gettin quick silver CNN mentions, “last figures—”
Look at yall outsourcin illness,
sendin mission Christians west to bear witness.
Figures:                 nigg—s.
Aint nobody lookin for yall,
pukin on yaselves. Stop bleedin on my wealth.
Grave digg—s, all yall.                                     (you
Righteous white God, let ya white wrath fall.              know
Epidemic? Disparity? Thrall?                                                   why

(All I know is there should be no
reason                  I know               you      )

Look at yall tryna gain world-scale weight
in the only way you know: victims. Nigg—s.
Look at yall cryin asses.
We aint even buyin that,
so you can hold that thought.                         (you
Walk before you crawl.                                                know
Always got a hand out. Got gall.                                              why
“Save a nigg— baby
with a 1-800 call?
Another penny per month
sends Ebola patient doll?
Let em shit and scrawl a prayer on a wall.”
Click.
reason)

 

(photo by FWM)
(photo by FWM)

Justin Phillip Reed lives in Saint Louis, where he attends the MFA program at Washington University. He has poems forthcoming in joINT., Boston Review, and PLUCK!. YesYes Books will release his first chapbook in Spring 2016. He was born and raised in South Carolina.

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