Rodney A. Brown
Documenting What Has Come Up With Time
A Black boy in Dayton. [I guess I’m still living it. It’s in my blood memory. The summer of 1989 was the peak of men just brutally dropping like flies. And in the same circle. We danced around the reality of not knowing at the time how the disease was passed on. Maybe it was foolish at the time but we just kept dancing. The only problem was.] The gravity of the graveyard space. Remember witnessing. Remember their wakes? Them filled, lined up and smelling sweet coffins with cuts on the inside undersurface. Pulled open and then blackjoy things like biddles, flowers, and herbs from the earth at Congo Square lain slowly down in the cushion and sewn together as a kind of love offering. Perfumed. Flesh and bones in a neatly organized laying down. Presumably resting bodies with spirits somehow going somewhere—home or away to some other place. Chaperoned by hand claps for some. Bagpipes for others. Songs are ever present as we funeral goin’ folx do the burial swinglow without forgetting. [One weekend we had lost like two or three people. Friday. Saturday. Sunday.] We knew them. No, know em’. Nozipho Bhengu. [Out of state.] Mike Malone. [Houston TX.] Blaine Evans. [Thursday.] Essex Hemphill. [September.] Alvin Ailey. [Concord.] Arthur Ash. [July.] David Irish. [February.] Rock Hudson. [August.] LaBron. [Syracuse.] Eugene’s ex-boyfriend. [April.] Michael and Jesus who had lovesex together with Bryan and Josh and Sabrina. [Thursday, Saturday night and early Sunday morning.] Iaokim. [Miami resuscitated and then gone away fo’real-fo’real in June.] Donald E. Garrison Jr. [3 December 1997, Age 44, Houston.] Human immunodeficiency virus. [Everywhere hopefully very, very soon.] Jeff, brother of Jim. [Atlanta.] Jamal. [Ohio.] Dorian Corey. [January.] Ulysses Dove. [Tennessee.] Hibiscus. [December.] Willi Ninja. [Paris. New York. Chicago.] Angie Xtravaganza. [In state.] Marta. [February.] Arnie Zane. [Virginia.] Kuwasi Balagoon. [March the first day.] Sisters who were dead in their prison cells. [Born 1970 lived almost to the year 1982.] Easy E. [7:15 in the morning.] Pearl, a mother of an HIV positive child whose [death became commonplace.] Marlon Riggs. [Missouri. Cincinnati, Ohio. Las Vegas, Nevada. May. Sunday.] Penelope. [Blood Transfusions 6 September—January 24.] And I nearing a complete psychosocial.
Rodney A. Brown is a choreographer who connects art, performance and education through choreographic practice and advocacy. He founded the Brown Dance Project in 2006, and was an assistant professor of dance at Ohio State University from from 2012–2016. A native of Dayton, Ohio, Brown was a member of the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company (DCDC). Brown has taught at the University of Michigan, Spelman College, Kentucky Governors’ School for the Arts, and served as Artistic Director of Dance at Santa Fe College. He holds an MFA in dance from the University of Michigan, and a BA in performing arts from Oakland University. Brown currently lives in New York City, where he is experiencing homelessness.
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Here is today’s prompt
(optional as always)
Today’s poem explores the impact HIV/AIDS had on the poet/speaker when as a young Black man in Dayton, Ohio. Write a poem about any aspect of HIV/AIDS in Black communities in the United States or elsewhere.