Remain Uncomfortable
b'Today we have a poem that really speaks to what our nation is going through, and what black people have to go through on a regular basis. We will take a look at Terrance Hayes\'s poem "Talk"\\xa0\\n\\nLink to his Bio: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/terrance-hayes\\nBPP Email: BasementPoetryPod@gmail.com\\nTranscription of the Poem:\\xa0\\nTalk\\nlike a nigger now, my white friend, M, said\\nafter my M.L.K. and Ronald Reagan impersonations,\\nthe two of us alone and shirtless in the locker room,\\nand if you\'re thinking my knuckles knocked\\na few times against his jaw or my fingers knotted\\nat his throat, you\'re wrong because I pretended\\nI didn\'t hear him, and when he didn\'t ask it again,\\nwe slipped into our middle school uniforms\\nsince it was November, the beginning\\nof basketball season, and jogged out\\nonto the court to play together\\nin that vision Americans wish for\\ntheir children, and the point is we slipped\\ninto our uniform harmony, and spit out GO TEAM!\\nour hands stacked on and beneath the hands\\nof our teammates and that was as close\\nas I may have come to passing for one\\nof the members of The Dream, my white friend\\nthinking I was so far from that word\\nthat he could say it to me, which I guess\\nhe could since I didn\'t let him taste the salt\\nand iron in the blood, I didn\'t teach him\\nwhat it\'s like to squint through a black eye,\\nand if I had to wonder if he would have grown\\nup to be the kind of white man who believes\\nall blacks are thugs or if he would have learned\\nto bite his tongue or let his belly be filled\\nby shame, but more importantly, would I be\\nthe kind of black man who believes silence\\nis worth more than talk or that it can be\\na kind of grace, though I\'m not sure\\nthat\'s the kind of black man I\'ve become,\\nand in any case, M, wherever you are,\\nI\'d just like to say I heard it, but let it go,\\nbecause I was afraid to lose our friendship\\nor afraid we\'d lose the game -- which we did anyway.\\n\\n\\xa0\\n\\n--- \\n\\nSupport this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/bppod/support'