Reuben Jackson Shares a Poem from his Upcoming Collection
Like the city itself, the Northwest Washington, D.C. neighborhood in which I was raised has changed radically, and yet it has not. There is a certain way in which the streets -and the row brick houses- still provide context, and deep, deep, memory.
The other day, I took a walk on my block and found myself standing in front of the house in which the neighbor/friend we called "Little Man" was raised. He kept the front porch company. And he was one of the saddest people I have ever met.
He killed himself when he was 7. This poem is a kind of a written/aural historical plaque. Or, as saxophonist Lester Young would say, "a spark of my heart."
—Reuben Jackson
little man, september 1963
there’s a cloud in your
head
you try and conceal
a cloud
just like the kid up the street
who lives on the porch
and broods like
a seven-year-old jeremiah
the occasional domestic fistfight
punctuates
the weighty sentence
he has become
one day he calls you over
and asks about the books
you always carry
he wants to know
if you know what
people are whispering
are you lonely?
he asks
as if he didn’t know the answer
he knows you know the lyrics
to his song