Washington, James, Jr

English

Dartmouth Digital Commons (Dartmouth College)

 38  ON THE CRUMBLED ASPHALT POETRY James Washington, Jr.  Mama, Mama, Mama!   – George Floyd of my childhood, we black kids,  on our lay-away bikes, split even into  cops & robbers, on any another  outside day.  We wore black  Converse sneakers, with hole-soles & topside wrapped  just as they do on nature TV –  alligators subdued,  snout to jaw hinge, by noosed rope, & cold-blood  swamp men.  Sunny days or not,  On the Crumbled Asphalt | Washington Jr. 39  a clot of old-school single mothers, stockings knotted  above their calves,  talked at the stoops of should-have-been  long condemned  public housing.   They all knew who we were, & whose  mothers we belonged to. If we got too rambunctious, their magic sent word ahead before we, & our floppy high-tops, could run home  with a plausibility.   Come to think about it, those peel-eyed mothers  were like our civilian  police oversight committee,  making sure we played cops & robbers fair.  &, of course,  we were never  Clamantis | Vol. 2 No. 2 40  stupid enough to hold the captured, kneeling knee to neck, on that blistering concrete.  No way! That craziness  wouldn’t ever be fair

On the Crumbled Asphalt

https://digitalcommons.dartmouth.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1329&context=clamantis

On the Crumbled Asphalt

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