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JAMAAL MAY

On Gentleness


Tell me I once came close, that your body wasn’t 
an obelisk, and mine, so much wire wound 
around wire. I will always wonder 
 
if I can take you, know you will always be stronger,
and marvel at how you appear even larger 
than before with my niece cupped 
 
in your tattooed arms. I know something simple
provokes you to call: a comic book 
we’ve both read, a good time 
 
to visit, but my thumb hovers over decline
and I hold my breath before I press
against the waiting answer. 
  
                         ••

Before I left for Florida—a week after I tore 
the collar of my shirt, twisting out 
of your grip, a week after 
 
I disappeared with our shared car, the Venture 
minivan we nicknamed Vendetta, 
and brought it back to you 
 
empty and smashed—you stopped me to tell me 
to never come back. You meant it. I said 
I wouldn’t. I meant flinching 
 
is something I’d only do in oncoming light, never 
the overcoat of a shadow; being the size of
a threat did strange things to my tongue. 
  
                         ••

Tell me about the night I hurled a phone receiver
at your head and the orb of blood on your lip 
that seemed like it’d never fall, how you 
 
bound me by a wrist, bruised my ribs against the floor,
and never threw a single punch. Wasn’t that 
a kind of gentleness, Jabari?
 
 
  

 
80   The Paris-American

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Detroiter Jamaal May is the author of Hum (Alice James Books, 2013), winner of the Beatrice Hawley Award. His poems appear widely with the most recent work found in Poetry, The Believer, Ploughshares, New England Review, and Kenyon Review. Jamaal has received fellowships and scholarships from Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Cave Canem, Callaloo Workshop, and Bucknell University where he was named the 2011-2013 Stadler Fellow. He currently acts as series editor, graphic designer, and web manager for the Organic Weapon Arts Chapbook Press.  His Hum Digital Shorts video series can be found on Youtube.
 

   
   Next week's poet:

 Emilia Phillips
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