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      April 2, 2019I, StutterRayon Lennon

      Dear King,
      I am tired of thinking
      About racism the way
      I am tired of worrying
      About no sun past
      Dying the way I am tired
      Of thinking about
      Being fluent as a freeway
      Even though I’ve stuttered
      Since I was green in
      A Jamaican countryside
      Unaware I was even
      Black the way
      Now how snow
      Lights up New
      Haven the way
      I’m cold as darkness
      Shadowing a shrinking
      Man crossing
      A street in clapping
      Steel boots the way true love
      Has eluded me like real
      Death the way
      A white woman
      In a black club once held
      Me like hot coffee
      And sipped from my
      Mouth like she could turn
      Me to wine the way
      Afrobeat turned
      Old hip hop to new
      School punk rap to raw
      Dancehall to crickets when
      I stuttered a joke
      In her ear and fear grew
      Her eyes and she shrieked thinking
      I had said something
      Ugly to her when
      I had said let’s go home
      Later and love each other
      But she might have shrieked
      At the word home
      Because home is life,
      My friend, and you gave
      Yours for ours, like the Bible
      Says but didn’t the way
      A Jamaican club
      Can be America the way
      The beat bounces off
      The walls in between
      Loneliness the way
      Everybody’s body is
      One tally once the music
      Injects spirits the way
      Once on a date a fire
      Jamaican woman rejected
      Me like my mother country
      For being too Jamerican
      The way a white man twice
      Asked me to tell him
      My story during
      An interview for clinical
      Labor at a detention
      Center and I said
      I stutter but
      Didn’t say my angst
      Came in a slave
      Ship and I’m still
      Silent but crying out
      Because I want
      My planet
      To want me
      The way I want my life
      To be fluent as heaven
      The way our devil
      President’s in love
      With golf the way I am
      Because it’s therapy
      And paradise
      The way my present
      Boss can rifle out
      An email demanding more
      Work in less time
      Because my time
      Was bought and sold the way
      I want to respond
      But don’t because
      My boss has a boss
      Who has a boss who has
      A president who has a god
      Who knows my thoughts
      And yours and knows
      We don’t reply because
      All lives stutter the way
      Death keeps tapping
      At our door because
      We can’t buy back
      Time the way we are
      Sick again from
      Spring landing
      With another police
      Killing the way I wake
      Up from a perfect world
      Each day.

      from Poets Respond

      Rayon Lennon

      “In general, I don’t support Trump, but I recently read a Facebook post by a smart friend criticizing Trump for golfing too much. I started to golf two years ago and I am addicted to the peace it brings me, and I told myself that, if I were president, I would be golfing all the time too. So, sigh, I understand why Trump golfs a lot. At least that’s one thing I have in common with him. I was shocked to find myself defending Trump and my friend was too. I think it got me thinking about things we aren’t allowed to say, and it got me thinking about my life-long stutter and all the things I didn’t use to say because I stutter. All the things I say in poems now.”

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