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Callaloo 29.3 (2006) 806-807


Introduction
—thinking on Sonny
Curtis Crisler

I'm cooking bacon and eggs
and toast with buttered grits on
an October Saturday morning
for my homies who spent the night.
We're mouthing off 'bout playing
some street football after breakfast;
gather up the boys from East 6th
Avenue, a good squad. Grandmaster
Flash and The Furious 5
is back
beat, rah, as I pop-n-break, spatula up
chattering bacon, when he enters,
asks me,
           "You getting any pussy?"
Silence pulls up a chair, bacon sizzles,
Sonny eats what I have piled on plate,
with toast. Another rah. My three
friends catch their breath, chuckle,
and look for me to confirm. Wwhht
wwhht wwhht,
Flash scratchin' what
pulls at my insides, the bacon is
a high-hat foreground. Sonny,
between smacks, "Had some last
night."
           It's been eight years since
Grandma Marie went to glory,
left me Marvel Comics, Mama
as matriarch, and Sonny. "Don't
have to chase that little yellow gal
up and down the street. I can get
you some pussy, let me know."
My friends snicker at his oral con-
tract. While Mama's in Puerto Rico
caring 'bout her sister's first child,
the dilemma's at home. [End Page 806]
                     "This Sonny,
my grandfather, y'all." He takes
some more bacon and wraps it with
a piece of toast, walks into living-
room. "He's cool," my friends say.
I count the pieces of bacon taken
hostage, killed by embarrassment.
More strips sizzle in skillet, shrink
into little bodies of men, of boys
once wwhht wwhht wwhht raw.

Curtis L. Crisler, a lecturer at Indiana Purdue Fort Wayne, has published The Ringing Ear, L'intrigue, The Fourth River, Only the Sea Keeps: Poetry of the Tsumani, and other periodicals and anthologies.

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