In the Language of My Captor. Shane McCrae

      

       In the Language of My Captor

      IN THE LANGUAGE OF MY CAPTOR

      SHANE McCRAE

      Wesleyan University Press

      MIDDLETOWN, CONNECTICUT

       Wesleyan Poetry

      Wesleyan University Press

      Middletown CT 06459

       www.wesleyan.edu/wespress

      © 2017 Shane McCrae

      All rights reserved

      Manufactured in the United States of America

      Designed by Quemadura

      Typeset in DIN and Scala

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: McCrae, Shane, 1975– author.

      Title: In the language of my captor / Shane McCrae.

      Description: Middletown, Connecticut : Wesleyan University Press, [2017] | Series: Wesleyan poetry

      Identifiers: LCCN 2016035696 (print) | LCCN 2016041724 (ebook) | ISBN 9780819577115 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780819577139 (ebook)

      Classification: LCC PS3613.C385747 A6 2017 (print) | LCC PS3613.C385747 (ebook) | DDC 811/.6—dc23

      LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016035696

      5 4 3 2 1

      Cover photo: Bradley Theodore, Young President 2015.

       For my families

      You will feed yourself five thousand times. —THYLIAS MOSS

       Contents

1
His God	3
Panopticon	5
Privacy	6
What Do You Know About Shame	8
Privacy 2	11
In the Language	13
2
Purgatory: A Memoir / A Son and a Father of Sons	17
3
Banjo Yes Receives a Lifetime Achievement Award	55
Banjo Yes Recalls His First Movies	58
Banjo Yes Talks About His First White Wife	60
Banjo Yes Plucks an Apple from a Tree in a Park	61
Banjo Yes Talks About Motivation	63
Banjo Yes Asks a Journalist	65
4
(hope)(lessness)	69
Sunlight	72
Jim Limber the Adopted Mulatto Son of Jefferson Davis Visits His Adoptive Parents After the War	77
Asked About The Banjo Man and Its Sequels Banjo Yes Tells a Journalist Something About Himself	78
Still When I Picture It the Face of God Is a White Man’s Face	82
Acknowledgments	85

      1

His God

      I am the keeper tells

      Me the most popular exhibit

      You might not think this cheers me but it does

      I’m given many opportunities

      I like especially to ask the groups

      Led by fat white men I am careful to

      Never address the fat man but the group

      How has it come // To pass

      that I’m on this side of the bars

      And you’re on that side

      And Who stands in your shoes

       You or the people you resemble

      they don’t give me shoes // I say

      Gesturing toward a zoo employee

      and I smile

      Often the people do not answer me

      Often the fat man squints and says It real- // ly makes you think

      Something like that or There

      but for the grace of God / I tell the keeper they must be

      The daughters and the sons of nearer gods

      I tell him my gods had to stay behind

      To watch my people / He likes it when I talk like that

      the truth is I don’t know

      The keeper when he’s drunk

      Sometimes he says I’m lucky

      To have been rescued from my gods

      And I should thank the man who bought me

      I used to laugh at him but now I grieve

      I think // His god is not a god like mine / His god

      Is not a mother not a father

      not a hunter not a farmer

      his / God is a stranger

      from no country he has seen

Panopticon

      The keeper put me in the cage with the monkeys

      Because I asked to be

      Put in the cage with the monkeys

      Most of the papers say the monkeys

      must // Remind me of my family

      The liberal papers say the monkeys must

      Remind me of my home

      The papers don’t ask me

      some days // I tuck notes explanations

      Into soft monkey shits

      and call white children to the bars

      I warn the parents / But still they let their children come

      And that’s my explanation / I am

      their honest mirror

      I say Whether you’re here

       to