American Sonnet(s) for the American Poets I Owe Nothing

I.

I do not know what Walt Whitman said about multitudes

but I can tell you about the time on the Walt Whitman Bridge

four deep in grandmomma’s Civic / blasting Jeezy / windows down

trunk rattling / summer licking sweat from our temples

was the closest I ever felt to God. Talk to me about the canon

& I think of Gangsta Grillz CDs sold on 52nd & Market

beneath the El / out the trunk of a Crown Vic when Lil Wayne

was still the best rapper alive & every bar sounded

like the hunger of someone who knew they wasn’t

supposed to make it this long. I haven’t read Allen Ginsberg

but I watched Iverson drop a whole city to its knees

with a crossover that broke time in half. That alone is a kind of verse.

I don’t know what Robert Frost was on about

but I’ve slept in a bubble coat through winters too cruel for metaphor.

II.

I cannot quote Bukowski / but I know line for line

the story my father tells / how he rubbed shoulders

with Barkley at Club McDonald's in the early ‘90s

frontin like they went way back / with the red-&-black lumberjack

& the hat to match / trying to impress the woman

who later became my mother. I don’t know Ezra Pound

but I can tell you how Skeemo flipped a pound on 69th

then bet it all on a dice game / left with pockets

fat as church envelopes / paid his mama’s rent

bought water ice for every youngboul on the block

a summer of sweetness. Tell me that ain’t a stanza

worth studying? I never read Elizabeth Bishop

but I know “Raheem is dead / somebody shot him”

& I got the Juice. I woulda thrown Tupac off that roof

if it meant Q walked away with a pulse & a future.

III.

They say I should know the classics. I do:

when Nina sat at the piano like an altar

summoned a storm named change / her voice cracking the room

like a screen door in July / letting all the ancestors in at once.

When Lady Day pulled a whole century of sorrow

through her throat just to survive to the next note.

When Marvin sang of for the better world he only saw

in his dreams. These are my dead poets society.

I’m not pressed to know your Plaths & Poes.

Got Sonia Sanchez / got Baraka / got mama’s humming in the kitchen

got griots in the group chat. We be line-breaking in voice memos

we be epic / we be ode / we be real cool. & if you ask

why I don’t read the canon / I’ll ask why you think they worth reading?

I don’t read the dead if they never spoke my name

got enough ghosts already calling me home.

About the Author:

Tyler Isaiah Campbell is a poet and writer from Philadelphia, PA. He is currently a doctoral student at Yale in Black Studies & English Literature department(s).