Dont Let Me Be Lonely [There was a time]

Claudia Rankine

There was a time I could say no one I knew well had died. This is not to suggest no one died. When
I was eight my mother became pregnant. She went to the hospital to give birth and returned without
the baby. Wheres the baby? we asked. Did she shrug? She was the kind of woman who liked to
shrug; deep within her was an everlasting shrug. That didnt seem like a death. The years went by
and people only died on televisionif they werent Black, they were wearing black or were
terminally ill. Then I returned home from school one day and saw my father sitting on the steps of
our home. He had a look that was unfamiliar; it was flooded, so leaking. I climbed the steps as far
away from him as I could get. He was breaking or broken. Or, to be more precise, he looked to me
like someone understanding his aloneness. Loneliness. His mother was dead. Id never met her. It
meant a trip back home for him. When he returned he spoke neither about the airplane nor the
funeral.

Every movie I saw while in the third grade compelled me to ask, Is he dead? Is she dead? Because
the characters often live against all odds it is the actors whose mortality concerned me. If it were
an old, black-and-white film, whoever was around would answer yes. Months later the actor would
show up on some latenight talk show to promote his latest efforts. I would turn and sayone
always turns to sayYou said he was dead. And the misinformed would claim, I never said he
was dead. Yes, you did. No, I didnt. Inevitably we get older; whoever is still with us says, Stop
asking me that.

Or one begins asking oneself that same question differently. Am I dead? Though this question at
no time explicitly translates into Should I be dead, eventually the suicide hotline is called. You
are, as usual, watching television, the eight-oclock movie, when a number flashes on the screen:
I-800-SUICIDE. You dial the number. Do you feel like killing yourself? the man on the other end
of the receiver asks. You tell him, I feel like I am already dead. When he makes no response you
add, I am in deaths position. He finally says, Dont believe what you are thinking and feeling.
Then he asks, Where do you live?
Fifteen minutes later the doorbell rings. You explain to the ambulance attendant that you had a
momentary lapse of happily. The noun, happiness, is a static state of some Platonic ideal you know
better than to pursue. Your modifying process had happily or unhappily experienced a momentary
pause. This kind of thing happens, perhaps is still happening. He shrugs and in turn explains that
you need to come quietly or he will have to restrain you. If he is forced to restrain you, he will
have to report that he is forced to restrain you. It is this simple: Resistance will only make matters
more difficult. Any resistance will only make matters worse. By law, I will have to restrain you.
His tone suggests that you should try to understand the difficulty in which he finds himself. This
is further disorienting. I am fine! Cant you see that! You climb into the ambulance unassisted.

from Citizen: You are in the dark, in the car... Related Poem Content Details
BY CLAUDIA RANKINE
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00:2205:42Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume.
/

You are in the dark, in the car, watching the black-tarred street being swallowed by speed; he tells
you his dean is making him hire a person of color when there are so many great writers out there.

You think maybe this is an experiment and you are being tested or retroactively insulted or you
have done something that communicates this is an okay conversation to be having.

Why do you feel okay saying this to me? You wish the light would turn red or a police siren would
go off so you could slam on the brakes, slam into the car ahead of you, be propelled forward so
quickly both your faces would suddenly be exposed to the wind.

As usual you drive straight through the moment with the expected backing off of what was
previously said. It is not only that confrontation is headache producing; it is also that you have a
destination that doesnt include acting like this moment isnt inhabitable, hasnt happened before,
and the before isnt part of the now as the night darkens and the time shortens between where
we are and where we are going.

/

When you arrive in your driveway and turn off the car, you remain behind the wheel another ten
minutes. You fear the night is being locked in and coded on a cellular level and want time to
function as a power wash. Sitting there staring at the closed garage door you are reminded that a
friend once told you there exists a medical termJohn Henryismfor people exposed to
stresses stemming from racism. They achieve themselves to death trying to dodge the build up of
erasure. Sherman James, the researcher who came up with the term, claimed the physiological
costs were high. You hope by sitting in silence you are bucking the trend.

When the stranger asks, Why do you care? you just stand there staring at him. He has just referred
to the boisterous teenagers in Starbucks as niggers. Hey, I am standing right here, you responded,
not necessarily expecting him to turn to you.

He is holding the lidded paper cup in one hand and a small paper bag in the other. They are just
being kids. Come on, no need to get all KKK on them, you say.

Now there you go, he responds.

The people around you have turned away from their screens. The teenagers are on pause. There I
go? you ask, feeling irritation begin to rain down. Yes, and something about hearing yourself
repeating this strangers accusation in a voice usually reserved for your partner makes you smile.

A man knocked over her son in the subway. You feel your own body wince. Hes okay, but the
son of a bitch kept walking. She says she grabbed the strangers arm and told him to apologize: I
told him to look at the boy and apologize. And yes, you want it to stop, you want the black child
pushed to the ground to be seen, to be helped to his feet and be brushed off, not brushed off by the
person that did not see him, has never seen him, has perhaps never seen anyone who is not a
reflection of himself.
The beautiful thing is that a group of men began to stand behind me like a fleet of bodyguards, she
says, like newly found uncles and brothers.

The new therapist specializes in trauma counseling. You have only ever spoken on the phone. Her
house has a side gate that leads to a back entrance she uses for patients. You walk down a path
bordered on both sides with deer grass and rosemary to the gate, which turns out to be locked.

At the front door the bell is a small round disc that you press firmly. When the door finally opens,
the woman standing there yells, at the top of her lungs, Get away from my house. What are you
doing in my yard?

Its as if a wounded Doberman pinscher or a German shepherd has gained the power of speech.
And though you back up a few steps, you manage to tell her you have an appointment. You have
an appointment? she spits back. Then she pauses. Everything pauses. Oh, she says, followed by,
oh, yes, thats right. I am sorry.

I am so sorry, so, so sorry.

/
 The Bad Old Days
Related Poem Content Details
BY KENNETH REXROTH
The summer of nineteen eighteen
I read The Jungle and The
Research Magnificent. That fall
My father died and my aunt
Took me to Chicago to live.
The first thing I did was to take
A streetcar to the stockyards.
In the winter afternoon,
Gritty and fetid, I walked
Through the filthy snow, through the
Squalid streets, looking shyly
Into the peoples faces,
Those who were home in the daytime.
Debauched and exhausted faces,
Starved and looted brains, faces
Like the faces in the senile
And insane wards of charity
Hospitals. Predatory
Faces of little children.
Then as the soiled twilight darkened,
Under the green gas lamps, and the
Sputtering purple arc lamps,
The faces of the men coming
Home from work, some still alive with
The last pulse of hope or courage,
Some sly and bitter, some smart and
Silly, most of them already
Broken and empty, no life,
Only blinding tiredness, worse
Than any tired animal.
The sour smells of a thousand
Suppers of fried potatoes and
Fried cabbage bled into the street.
I was giddy and sick, and out
Of my misery I felt rising
A terrible anger and out
Of the anger, an absolute vow.
Today the evil is clean
And prosperous, but it is
Everywhere, you dont have to
Take a streetcar to find it,
And it is the same evil.
And the misery, and the
Anger, and the vow are the same.
The News Related Poem Content Details
BY KATIE PETERSON
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00:1401:26Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume.
In different cities, on different
forms of transportation, a woman read Daniel Deronda
until the year became the arbitrary pink
the calendar chose for the middle of winter.
And finally she sat in the reference section
of the public library finishing Daniel Deronda
for days at a slowing pace between pieces
of newspapers and foreign language newspapers
whose syntax she enjoyed, not understanding.
And when she didn't anymore she wrote in the margins
of Daniel Deronda for someone
who might never see. Thought of that person
who might never see, staring equally at the rain, equally
thinking of her and of nothing in particular.
Outside the news fell apart. If one chooses
to be shallow or noble, or one
is born so, and if it matters. Translations
are appropriate when Nature is dormant, or when one
has nothing to say, or does not know
what to say. These are three different things
but sometimes they are the same.
It is not wrong to want nice things, neither
is it wrong to want to be good, or to feel that
as a physical force of pleasure: Daniel Deronda,
who does not know who he is,
who thinks he does, and goes away on a boat.
But the cover is a picture of a woman gambling.
The air warms outside the reference
section, and also the rain. Incomprehensible news.
Whenever a book ends, silence, as if a stewardship had ceased.
A person can feel the bones of one's hands by stretching them.
If love comes again, know better than to speak.

Katie Peterson, "The News" from Permission. Copyright 2013 by Katie Peterson. Reprinted by
permission of New Issues Press.
Source: Permission (New Issues Press, 2013)
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Believe, Believe
Related Poem Content Details
BY BOB KAUFMAN
Believe in this. Young apple seeds,
In blue skies, radiating young breast,
Not in blue-suited insects,
Infesting societys garments.

Believe in the swinging sounds of jazz,

Tearing the night into intricate shreds,
Putting it back together again,
In cool logical patterns,
Not in the sick controllers,
Who created only the Bomb.

Let the voices of dead poets

Ring louder in your ears
Than the screechings mouthed
In mildewed editorials.
Listen to the music of centuries,
Rising above the mushroom time.
A Supermarket in California
Related Poem Content Details
BY ALLEN GINSBERG
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00:00

02:16

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What thoughts I have of you tonight Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets
under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit
supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full
of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!and you, Garcia Lorca,
what were you doing down by the watermelons?

I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in
the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price
bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and followed in
my imagination by the store detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting
artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.

Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does
your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights
out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in
driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have
when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood
watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?

Berkeley, 1955
 All Kinds of Fires Inside Our Heads
Related Poem Content Details
BY NIKKI WALLSCHLAEGER
The number of bodies i have
is equal to the number of
gurney transfers that are
televised.

If were all just human

then who is responsible?

A fire station drying out

from addiction. outside
the drizzling of firepower,
lowballing suns

its like a sauna in here.

the strain of a charred
bladder. bottled water
bad wiring,

that spark is no good

come sit with me for a
minute. my feet full of
diluted axe fluid

thought I heard you say

everything is medicine
but thats just hearin
what you wanna hear

The City's Oldest Known Survivor of the Great War

Related Poem Content Details
BY JAMES DOYLE
marches in uniform down the traffic stripe
at the center of the street, counts time
to the unseen web that has rearranged
the air around him, his left hand
stiff as a leather strap along his side,
the other saluting right through the decades
as if they weren't there, as if everyone under ninety
were pervasive fog the morning would dispel
in its own good time, as if the high school band
all flapping thighs and cuffs behind him
were as ghostly as the tumbleweed on every road
dead-ended in the present, all the ancient infantry
shoulder right, through a skein of bone, presenting arms
across the drift, nothing but empty graves now
to round off another century,
the sweet honey of the old cadence, the streets
going by at attention, the banners glistening with dew,
the wives and children blowing kisses.