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The Colour of James Brownâs Scream
``` The Colour of James Brownâs Scream
for Steve McCarthy and Todd Bracey
I have known you by many names but today you are Larry Levan, your hand on the platter in the smoky room of a Garage regularâs memory. You are keeping âWhen Doves Cryâ in time, as you swing your hips, and sweat drips from your hair the colour of James Brownâs scream. King of King Street, we are still moving to the same sound, though some of us donât know it is your grave we dance on, cutting shapes machismo lost to the beat â every road man is a sweetboy if the DJ plays âHeartbrokenâ at just the right time for these jaded feet. Teach us to shapeâshift, Legba, you must know Iâd know your customary shuffle, that phantom limp, anywhere; that I see your hand in the abandon of a couple, middle of the floor, sliding quick and slick as a skinâfade by the hand of a Puerto Rican clipperâman who wields a cutthroat like a paintbrush. Let us become like them, an ode to night, ordering beer in a corporeal language from a barman who replies by sweeping his arms in an arc, Willi Ninja style, to fix a drink our lips will yearn for, a taste weâve been trying to recreate ever since. ```
A Proud Blemish The year I finish wearing size eights,
learn to walk in a man's shoes
contradicting my small frame I walk across the Arndale estate: 2step is a sickness in the air, spreading to every good cassette player, after-hours wine bar, joy riderâs car. Most weekends I try to trick a woman used to the lies of men, sneak home an hour before she walks in the hallway, to practice my lines: I was home ⊠I just ⊠didnât hear the phone, the beep wait for tests. They donât know whatâs wrong of the answering machine, her saying my name until itâs a prayer, voice two parts anger, one despair, that her days are torn between work shifts and her only son. By the time I wear size nines, understand Caesarean when she answers my question: did it hurt? Shows me the dark line hidden under her work shirt, a proud mark on her skin with ridges from weight loss. She knows itâs not stress. We sit, lumps in our throats, she says, next day sheâs back to underground tunnels, thousands riding the same rough waves. Soon sheâs too weak to walk or wash herself. The bones of her skull give life to a face that once amazed grown men into mumbling stupors. On a grey ward, two months into size elevens, she speaks in my mother tongue, begs me to trace the steps of its music, but the clash of two languages keeps me from the truth I wonât hear. Sheâs dying but I wonât say sheâs dead, canât let mum become a body, a stone, an empty hospital bed.