A Pack of Cigarettes
- A Pack of Cigarettes
“Being in a group—a good one—couldmake you so cool you smoked.”—Wilson Pickett
“I started cooking on the roadbecause of segregation.”—Smokey Robinson
So what If they were Hoodlums, George’s Gang, The Outlaws, Never stole
or seriously Hurt anyone. All they did was croon On corners And break curfew,
press police Records—one breathtaking Release after another, No violence. Then nicotine hit
with the same Discriminating coffin nails As segregation. Airplay limited To the whole notes
of smoke Parliaments Made before rumbles, [End Page 67] Jim-crowded. All three lungs Negro As vinyl. Low
tar & pompadours, Doo process. Barbershop CLOSED. No wonder The Outlaws Had nowhere
to run (after Rumbles) except The needle-patroled, Bald highways Between
songs.
Thomas Sayers Ellis, an associate editor of Callaloo, is an instructor of African American literature and creative writing at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He recently received the MFA in creative writing at Brown University, a few years after he co-founded the Dark Room Writers Collective. He is a co-editor of On the Verge: Emerging Poets and Artists and one of the emerging poets collected in Take Three. His work has also been published in Agni, Callaloo, Kenyon Review, Southern Review, The Harvard Review, and Ploughshares.
