On Negative Capability

By JOHN MURILLO

       Whitewalls   Mudflaps
Late night howling down
       a dark dirt road   Headlights
killed and so the world gone
       black but for the two blunts
lit   illuminating Jojo’s fake gold
       grin   One girl each screaming
from the backseat we raced
       the red moon   rawdogged
the stars   His mama’s car
       my daddy’s gun   Public Enemy
Number One   Seventeen and
       simple   we wannabe hard-
rocks threw rudeboy fingers
       and gang signs at the sky
Blinded by the hot smoke
       rising like the sirens
in the subwoofers   blinded
       by the crotchfunk rising
from all our eager selves   We
       mashed in perfect murk   a city
block’s length   at least
       toward God   toward God
knows what   when   or why
       neither Jojo nor I   not   our
two dates screaming   had a clue
       or even care   what the dark
ahead held   Come road
       come night   come blackness
and the cold   Come havoc
       come mayhem   Come down
God   and see us   Come
       bloodshot moon running
alongside the ride   as if
       to warn us away from   as if
to run us straight into   some
       jagged tooth and jackal throated
roadside ditch   When Jojo
       gunned the gas   we pushed into
that night like a nest of sleeping
       jaybirds shaken loose and
plunging   Between our screams
       a hush so heavy we could
almost hear what was waiting
       in the dark

 

John Murillo is an Afro-Chicano poet, professor, and playwright. He is the author of the poetry collections Up Jump the Boogie (2010) and Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry, forthcoming from Four Way Books. He teaches at Wesleyan University.

[Purchase Issue 16 here.]

From the beginning, The Common has brought you transportive writing and exciting new voices. We are committed to supporting writers and maintaining free, unrestricted access to our website, but we can’t do it without you. Become an integral part of our global community of readers and writers by donating today. No amount is too small. Thank you!

On Negative Capability

Related Posts

Cover of All Is The Telling by Rosa Castellano

An Embodied Sense of Time: Raychelle Heath Interviews Rosa Castellano

ROSA CASTELLANO
I’m holding a blank page all the time for myself. That’s a truth that I choose to believe in: the blank page is a tool for our collective liberation. It can be how we keep going. I love that we can find each other on the page and heal each other, too. So, I invoke that again and again, for myself, because I need it.

Cloudy sunset over field.

Florida Poems

EDWARD SAMBRANO III
I will die in Portland on an overcast day, / The Willamette River mirroring clouds’ / Bleak forecast and strangers not forgetting— / Not this time—designer raincoats in their closets. / They will leave for work barely in time / To catch their railcars. It will happen / On a day like today.