Brother
A striking poem by Martheaus Perkins that interrogates the search for agency amidst the complexities of sex, violence, and masculinity.
One poet man I work with looks like Keith Haring with a horse’s mane. We’re at a Cook Out with milkshakes and gossip. Amid the chicken batter fumes, we weave an exquisite corpse poem. His turn my turn his turn my turn. He admits he wants to die. I explain that he shouldn’t. I admit I want to die. He explains that I shouldn’t. “Mick,” I say, “This business has been a struggle between being too honest and not being honest enough. And if each line break must be an orgasm I’m tired of faking it.” Mick slurps his cappuccino shake like the weirdo he is. “Mar Mar,” he blah blahs, “I don’t have many friends who are men. Can we talk” about our thirst? He reaches across my burger tray to pluck out my tibia feeding it to his teeth, he asks, “Where’d you learn to fight” and, “How come the greatest boxer in the world is always a Black man?” Pulling out a hair pic, Mick starts uncoiling my twist-out. Too intimate. This is all too intimate. Men were my first ugliness— I’ve tried to avoid them whenever possible. Mick drools up my ankle, nibbling a mural. This would’ve been hunky-dory if only Mick had touched me toward singing red azaleas just as Alma Thomas touched canvases into their own non-gender. I stab his eye socket with my milkshake straw. There’s little effect, except he’s crying now which makes this situation even more uncomfortable for me. I’ve only cried twice in the last twelve years. Once in middle school I sprained an ankle, the same Mick just ate. “Hey bro,” Mick pauses to say, “Crying is good for you. It took me a while to see it, but that’s our internalized toxic masculinity talking. Don’t be afraid” to feel. He puts my thigh back in his mouth. The second time. It was a summer writing conference, a party. All night, a tall man named Lionel stashed blunts and filthy-boy lagers behind his breath. He gripped the hips of plenty women who told him stop. Eventually he got right in my face, rapped some Naughty by Nature verse. And I don’t hate Naughty by Nature but when our faces are this close it’s either I’m fighting or fucking you. It becomes which family folktale to lend your cheek—men who only left the people they fucked or fucked up. Friends warned me about Lionel— about his overcompensation for the baldness. Though no one warned about the lightskin Medusa stare. Boils swelled my throat, clogging my “no.” I’ve hated the sound of my voice since dropping my childhood stutter. Maybe that’s why men eat at me. I wish it had been a SZA song playing. Stirring my stomach with R&B. I would’ve stood up for myself. Or not. I wish one of my mothers had told me what to do when a man countries over me, holds my head between his two options to twist it completely from my torso or kiss the baby of my forehead as a brother. Why didn’t I move? I knew I should’ve hit him. I knew all lightskin men are cornballs, easily scared off. I knew his Black mother spoiled him with one too many LEGO sets. All I’ve tried to inherit, and he still manned me. The next morning, Lionel was escorted from campus. And I cried. I cried in every shape I had. And, admitting this to Mick, he undevours me. •
Martheaus Perkins (he/him) is a first-gen college graduate and son of a single Black mother. He is the author of The Grace of Black Mothers (Trio House Press) and co-editor of BRAWL. The name “Martheaus” is a collection of each woman who raised him: “Mar-” was his grandmother, “-Thea-” is his mother, and “-us” represents the aunties who created the name. martheausperkins.com.
Edited by Cecilia Innis.