PRAISE FOR DOPPELGANGBANGER
“If you are among us who remember Tupac and Biggie and the confusing grief of their murders; if you are among us who spun College Dropout on obsolete technologies and then found ourselves on campuses sporting a determination to render our favorite CD out of date; if you are among us who sat among cousins and cronies on either side of a divide between the fearsome city and the uneasy suburb, these poems sing to us of us. Charleston is one of our most necessary observers of Black boyhood in all its beauty and difficulty. These are poems we need to carry in our hands like a switchblade, just in case.”
—Nate Marshall, author of Finna
“There is no knowing Chicago until it roars, with exploded rhythms and bladed reverence, from the throat of a Black man who has lived it, who knows that the city’s directive is both nurture and scar, and who emerges from that tumult with a story no one else can tell. With linguistic and lyrical ingenuity, Cortney Lamar Charleston burns his signature into these stanzas—hip-hop serves as pulse, and the lush lines are meant to do what they do to the air. But Doppelgangbanger is so much more than an aural triumph. With an unrelenting intimacy, Charleston dares us into a narrative we think we know—Black boy vs. the scheming wiles of the city vs. the rest of his life—then backhand slaps us toward a singular experience marked by choices that can only guide the life of one man. This is unpredictability. This is intrepid insight. This is dance music. This is heartbreak. This is Black boy joy. This is a book that will work you. You best be ready—then you better tell somebody.”
—Patricia Smith, author of Incendiary Art
“In this lush, complex, and lyrical exploration of Black manhood, Cortney Lamar Charleston exposes trip wires, short fuses, destructive tropes, code switches, guises, and strips them to their sublime core. Doppelgangbanger forces us to examine the myriad ways we perform our masculinity, our pathologies, and the strategies we employ to downplay our genius and sensitivity in an effort to be loved and accepted. Formalistically astute, the still lifes in this collection are rendered so powerfully that we become aim and target in a single line or momentary glance. Charleston is a poet of the soul, an exalted mathematician in love’s calculus. Hang on with both hands, reader; the poems in this collection are bottomless.”
—Willie Perdomo, author of The Crazy Bunch
“Cortney Lamar Charleston is a master wordsmith. Charleston sees every word as an opportunity to amplify, subvert, twist, and pivot. Doppelgangbanger’s images shape shift before our eyes and elude simple reductions. Are the poems coming of age stories? Yes, and they give tender and fierce critiques of masculinity and loving portraits of family, and subvert the white gaze. This book drips with so much style, it’s actually multiple books.”
—José Olivarez, author of Citizen Illegal
“Once again, Cortney Lamar Charleston has proven why he is one of the most profound, singular voices of a generation. He says, “I’m beside myself almost always: A-side, B-side,” and a door into the magic of lyric opens wide. In Doppelgangbanger, Charleston offers us a study in precision, in history—he takes us on a walk toward an understanding of our cultural injuries while leading us out of the darkness, still. Doppelgangbanger is a groundbreaking collection that I can’t wait to return to.”
—Camonghne Felix, author of Build Yourself a Boat
THE BREAKBEAT POETS SERIES
The BreakBeat Poets series is committed to work that brings the aesthetic of hip-hop practice to the page. These books are a cipher for the fresh, with an eye always to the next. We strive to center and showcase some of the most exciting voices in literature, art, and culture.
BREAKBEAT EDITORIAL BOARD:
Cofounders Kevin Coval (Creative Director) and Nate Marshall (Series Editor), Maya Marshall (Managing Editor), Safia Elhillo, Idris Goodwin, and José Olivarez
BREAKBEAT POETS SERIES TITLES INCLUDE:
The BreakBeat Poets: New American
Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop, edited
by Kevin Coval, Quraysh Ali
Lansana, and Nate Marshall
This Is Modern Art: A Play, Idris
Goodwin and Kevin Coval
The BreakBeat Poets Vol 2: Black
Girl Magic, edited by Mahogany L.
Browne, Jamila Woods, and Idrissa
Simmonds
Human Highlight, Idris Goodwin and
Kevin Coval
On My Way to Liberation, H. Melt
Black Queer Hoe,
Britteney Black Rose Kapri
Citizen Illegal, José Olivarez
Graphite, Patricia Frazier
The BreakBeat Poets Vol 3:
Halal If You Hear Me, edited by
Fatimah Asghar and Safia Elhillo
Commando, E’mon Lauren
Build Yourself a Boat,
Camonghne Felix
Milwaukee Avenue, Kevin Coval
Bloodstone Cowboy, Kara Jackson
Everything Must Go, Kevin Coval,
illustrated by Langston Allston
Can I Kick It?, Idris Goodwin
The BreakBeat Poets Vol 4:
LatiNEXT, edited by Felicia Rose
Chavez, José Olivarez, and Willie
Perdomo
Too Much Midnight, Krista Franklin
The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop:
How to Decolonize the Creative
Writing Classroom,
Felicia Rose Chavez
Mama Phife Represents,
Cheryl Boyce Taylor
© 2021 Cortney Lamar Charleston
Published in 2021 by
Haymarket Books
P.O. Box 180165
Chicago, IL 60618
773-583-7884
www.haymarketbooks.org
info@haymarketbooks.org
ISBN: 978-1-64259-265-8
Distributed to the trade in the US through Consortium Book Sales and Distribution (www.cbsd.com) and internationally through Ingram Publisher Services International (www.ingramcontent.com).
This book was published with the generous support of Lannan Foundation and Wallace Action Fund.
Special discounts are available for bulk purchases by organizations and institutions. Please email orders@haymarketbooks.org for more information.
Cover artwork from Eclosion by Dr. Fahamu Pecou.
Cover design by Brett Neiman.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available.
for Cameron, Camille, and Calah
for the boy I was, the man I am, and the one I want to become
Men can starve from a lack of self-realization
as much as they can from a lack of bread.
—Richard Wright, Native Son
CONTENTS
The Unauthorized Autobiography of Jung Thug
I.
Hip-Hop Introspective
A Brief History of Poetry
Etymology of Hoochie Mama
The Attitude Era
Grand Theft Auto III (2001)
A Brief History of Violence
Self-Portrait as a Chicken Dinner
Still Life with the Dropout Bear Sitting in the Stands
Keep Your Mouth Shut
Still Life with Kendrick Lamar’s Mama’s Van
Family and Consumer Sciences
Animal Phat Farm
Etymology of Gangsta
Still Life with Crooked Painting and Bullet Holes in Grayscale
(Sub)Urban Dictionary
Dissplacement
Elegy for a False Sense of Security
Newton’s Third Law / Negritude’s First Law
II.
Genesis 10:11
Apologia with a Pregnancy Test and Weeping Jesus
The
Ballad of Addy Walker: An African-American Girl Story
Still Life with Torso of Cornrowed Neo-Soul Sanger
Hip-Hop Introspective
Giving Dap
Waves
Louis Vuitton Timberlands
“I Like My Women Like I Like My Cars,”
Doppelgangbanger
Psalm for P.
A Can of Murray’s Pomade, 1990–Present
Still Life with Woman and Balloons in Noir
Gangsters, Disciples
Still Life with the Color Orange
Grand Street
The Love Song of Percy Sledgehammer
Jesus Piece
A Character Solemnly Torn
III.
Self-Portrait as a Shadow
Hip-Hop Introspective
Lesson for Cortney
Self-Portrait as a Tea Bag
“When I Grow Up, I Want to Be a Martyr”
Sonic & Knuckles (1994)
Still Life with Young Black Woman’s Face Etched into a School Desk
Devotion (“I Am on the Battlefield for My Lord”)
Still Life with Light-Skinned Rapper Wearing Newsboy Cap
Moving Day (New Kids in the Neighborhood)
White History Month
Still Life with Black Boy’s Face Overlaying Project Buildings
Triggernometry
Jumpman: A Ghazal with Pivots
Jim Opus [jim oh-puh s]
Still Life with Skateboarding Rapper Orbited by Nerd Paraphernalia
No Weapon Formed Against Me Shall Prosper
Thugonomics
Ode to FAFSA
On Recidivism
Ode to the Paycheck
“I Ain’t Mean to Scare You, Lil’ Nigga,”
Acknowledgments
The Unauthorized Autobiography of Jung Thug
The fools nearly killed me trying to make me one of them:
a loaded word of bond with dress codes and penal codes,
from knots tied on the backs of head wraps worn hoods over.
I can’t gunpoint when the life of this alter ego began though
the possibility can’t be dismissed it began at gunpoint in a way,
with an icy pressure against the temple, the mind splitting into two
tracks while a circus of peers clowned.
Going back far too long
now, the camera has blurred my edges in the suggestion of motion
even if I stood as still as the air does before shit really hits the fan.
I truly went ass-first into fronting indifference, forbade my happy
teeth from public reveal lest they pop the balloon of my perfectly
round face, baby-angled, already read as kind or innocent or soft
from the jump when I wanted respect on my name and women on
my lap like it was said I should. And, shamefully, I did. Several
sistas come to mind here and this doesn’t make me feel good;
a tender touch in the moonlight goes only so far for a shadow.
I had to break it down for myself that being down represented
the fear of having fear.
I still shake when the wind blows,
scary as ever, thespian as always in all ways toward the ghost
of a threat or disrespect passed through me then through me,
through a thin skin then through the skin. So, to compensate—
a mask, what Dunbar’s bars beat home way back when about
standing in the presence of the pale folks, only that idea flipped
upside down, what’d be a forced smile slicing the face open like
some summertime melon instead setting scowl folds into smooth
forehead, brown eyes set at the mouth’s corners, fixing it in the
position of silence like rusty nails.
If carrying nothing else,
I learned to bring this exact look to the danger because being me
to the fullest would be a liability, provide a sharper image for the
hidden cameras to home in on; yes, just that fast—a certified blue,
strolling up to the screen door with a heavy hand for knocking and
his true hand resting so sweetly on his gun. My gun, I should say,
since in this case the cop is also me, like that little angel or devil
used as sitcom trope.
Just imagine the person coming for you being you
every time: don’t trip, you’d say, unless into the fight.
I.
Hip-Hop Introspective
Starting point: South Side, Chicago. Mid-90s.
The glory days, rocking my high-top fade.
I’m mesmerized by a poster on my uncle’s wall.
The black-tinted sunglasses, Jamaican dreads:
young Stevie Wonder sitting beside the
smiling Bob Marley, looking like two sides
of a DJ’s vinyl, something to be sampled, cut,
and sold like substances I’m not wise to yet.
When records spin, I listen. This is how
children learn here, how they become,
come into everything they already are.
See, my classmates and I come from all over:
from something, from nothing, but come to
the same school, on the same bus, religiously,
as though we were actually confirmed Catholics.
Every day, our ears dialed into 107.5 WGCI.
Every ride, repeating every word, nodding our
heads like we have naps on the brain; nappy
or not, the bus speakers are blowout combs.
We are Afro-American kids: the music
more fitting for us than the collared shirts
for black boys, plaid skirts for black girls.
It sounded like us from the inside of our
mamas’ wombs, new jacks with kick. And
somehow, still, too explicit. Gritty. Aggressive.
Skins we will grow into, to be killed softly.
One girl I talk with has braids like Lauryn Hill.
Six years old, already has to let herself into her
grandmother’s empty apartment, handle keys.
Somewhere there is a guitar she will never play.
In due time, she will be the one who tells me
Tupac is dead, and a blood relation of mine
“Tha Crossroads” music video begins to haunt me.
Biggie bites a few bullets. My next-door neighbors
get burglarized, not in South Side proper, though
it moves closer than it already is on our daily drive.
I move farther out when Mom gets a better job.
Dad needs a wheelchair now: a hard-knock life.
I miss hearing Boyz II Men and Blackstreet
everywhere I go. Even the name Backstreet
sounds stolen to me. Meanwhile, an album
on miseducation has only my pictures inside.
I hide my intelligence from my new peers as
an act of protection. Eminem gives all of them
an excuse for making conversation with me,
and I hate Mathers for it for at least four years.
Kids ask what FUBU means. White girls look at me
constantly. DMX never seems to be screaming.
The underground heads north on my playlists
while an old poster peels away from the wall.
I’m beside myself almost always: A-side, B-side.
A Brief History of Poetry
after Dan Albergotti
All day the boy sits behind the house
with his dog; all day the dog sits with him.
Well before then, the boy is dog himself:
obedient, sharp-toothed thing. Sun-kissed
boy. Too much kissed by sun, too much
kissed ea
rly on. Forgets his sharp teeth.
Forgets his animal, his beast, his chain
of events that keeps him in yard. Swoons
to the song of chain in swish. Fetches after
the orange ball like a good dog. Dog of sun.
Dog of Jesus. Dog that kneels when told,
genuflects on cue, that loves the sound of
tambourines, of metals fracturing silence.
He gets fed good meats. Plays with bones,
or studies archaeology, as some may call it.
Unearths. Devolves as he evolves. Hypothesizes
he is mutt on his father’s side, probably of
mixing by force. He is boy now, the smallness
of men. Wants his own dog, no longer to be
dog, wants to be man. Finally gets dog that
he sits with behind the house, the house he
gets moved from, made to mix by force of
proximity. Finds himself having to kiss up
because he is too sun-kissed to be down
with the other boys. Doesn’t use the same
words, or uses the same words differently.
Can’t figure out if he is still barking or they are.
All his old friends were his dogs, but he is boy
now, so he thinks, not completely hip to his
mouth re-learning the shape of certain words,
why suddenly they interest him like the hind-
quarters of a bitch, an instinct he should be
beyond, may have accidentally taught himself,
become dog again when his first dog died: when
it had a stroke behind the house and he sat there
with it until his father could cart it off to sleep.
Etymology of Hoochie Mama
I’m new to his neighborhood. He is equally
new to mine—the two, divided by a dotted line
like always, by colors and the casual violence
that implies, a parallel to the universe of blocks
fifty minutes away but not yet perverted by pistols.
And not yet a pound of dap between us either,
because this is the first chill, boys on trial basis,
a referee-striped sight with he and me sitting side
by side, a whistle in my head ready to blow foul
if need be as we’re watching TV, the videotape
I thieved from the parental collection, a rated-R