“I seen it lots of times, I seen it, just from being on the street when something was going down, I seen kids get killed, a few, my buddy Jules got bucked, this gang he was down with, I mean he wasn’t even down with them when they started beefin with this other gang, but one day, it was hot, I remember it was real hot, somebody called Jules and he opened the window and looked out and they got him in the head, you know all the time now you got to get em in the head, don’t shoot em in the head most likely they won’t die, and if they don’t die you might as well kill yourself cause soon as they on their feet they be gunning for you, might as well blow your ownself away. But you know what was funny, even the folks Jules was down with didn’t know who smoked him cause they was beefin with so many other gangs, and then there was Billy, they jacked him up big time, blew him up just for talkin shit, acting like he was down with the boys from Blue Hill, cocking them colors wrong, and I’m sorry for laughing, I know it ain’t funny, but I was still expecting to see my boys hanging in the hood, jiving and scoping the bitches, but then I saw them at the wake, lying stiff, skin two colors too light, wearing wigs to hold their heads on and their mamas clawing at them and screaming out they heads for Jesus, then I knew Jules and Billy wouldn’t be hanging no more, but after a while you just deal with dying, you get cold with it, it’s like ‘Yo man, somebody got their cap peeled last night, you know who it was? Man, not him man, that’s foul, he was down man, you going to the wake? No man, can’t make it, got a game, gotta kick some ass on the court.’ You just take in the word, you know, about somebody dying and you deal with it, can’t let it twist you round and mess your head up cause then you let your guard down and like I said before might as well kill yourself. Me? I ain’t worried about dying. I wear the right colors, got my brim twisted proper. Sometimes its even fun hanging out at places most people are scared of, like down at Dudley late at night, the game is not knowing if you gon be there when something goes down and something always does, somebody gets bucked and hits the street and some people will say ’Oh man, that’s too bad,’ but almost everyone else will say ‘Did you see that guy get shot, that was live man, did you see how he ran, how he fell, how he screamed like a girl?
It was like the movies man.
He screamed like a fuckin girl.’ ”
Sharon Olds
The I is Made of Paper
The Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Sharon Olds discusses sex, religion, and writing poems that “women were definitely not supposed to write,” in an excerpt from her Art of Poetry interview with Jessica Laser. Olds also reads three of her poems: “Sisters of Sexual Treasure” (issue no. 74, Fall–Winter 1978), “True Love,” and “The Easel.”
This episode was produced and sound-designed by John DeLore. The audio recording of “Sisters of Sexual Treasure” is courtesy of the Woodberry Poetry Room, Harvard University.
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