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Requiem for the Champ June Jordan april 1992 Mike Tyson comes from Brooklyn. And so do I. He grew up about a twenty-minute bus ride from my house. I always thought his neighborhood looked like a war zone. It reminded me of Berlin immediately after World War II. I had never seen Berlin except for black-and-white photos in Life magazine, but that was bad enough: rubble, barren, blasted. Everywhere you turned, your eyes recoiled from the jagged edges of an oªce building or a cathedral, shattered, or the tops of apartment houses torn o¤, and nothing alive even intimated, anywhere. I used to think, “This is what it means to Wght and really win or really lose. War means you hurt somebody, or something, until there’s nothing soft or sensible left.” For sure I never had a boyfriend who came out of Mike Tyson’s territory. Yes, I enjoyed my share of tough guys and gang members who walked and talked and fought and loved in quintessential Brooklyn ways: cool, tough, and deadly serious. But there was a code as rigid and as romantic as anything that ever made the pages of traditional English literature. A guy would beat up another guy or, if appropriate, he’d kill him. But a guy talked di¤erent to a girl. A guy made other guys clean up their language around “his girl.” A guy brought ribbons and candies and earrings and tulips to a girl. He took care of her. He walked her home. And if he got serious about that girl, and even if she was only twelve years old, then she became his “lady.” And woe betide any other guy stupid enough to disrespect that particular young black female. But none of the boys—none of the young men, none of the young black male inhabitants of my universe and my heart—ever came from Mike Tyson’s streets or avenues. We didn’t live someplace fancy or middle-class, but at least there were ten-cent gardens, front and back, and coin laundromats, and grocery stores, and soda parlors, and barber shops, and holy-roller church fronts, and chicken shacks, and dry cleaners, and bars and grills, and a takeout Chinese restaurant, and all of that kind of usable detail that does not survive a war. That kind of seasonal green turf and daily life-supporting pattern of establishments to meet your needs did not exist inside the gelid urban cemetery where Mike Tyson learned what he thought he needed to know. I remember when the City of New York decided to construct a senior housing project there, in the childhood world of former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson. I remember wondering, “Where in the hell will those old people have to go in order to Wnd food? And how will they get there?” I’m talking godforsaken. And much of living in Brooklyn was like that. But then it might rain or it might snow and, for example, I could look at the rain forcing forsythia 174 part 8 reforming criminal justice into bloom or watch how snowXakes can tease bare tree limbs into temporary blossoms of snow dissolving into diadems of sunlight. And what did Mike Tyson ever see besides brick walls and garbage in the gutter and disintegrating concrete steps and boarded-up windows and broken car parts blocking the sidewalk and men, bitter, with their hands in their pockets, and women, bitter, with their heads down and their eyes almost closed? In his neighborhood, where could you buy ribbons for a girl, or tulips? Mike Tyson comes from Brooklyn. And so do I. In the big picture of America, I never had much going for me. And he had less. I only learned, last year, that I can stop whatever violence starts with me. I only learned, last year, that love is inWnitely more interesting, and more exciting, and more powerful, than really winning or really losing a Wght. I only learned, last year, that all war leads to death and that all love leads you away from death. I am more than twice Mike Tyson’s age. And I’m not stupid. Or slow. But I’m black. And I come from Brooklyn. And I grew up Wghting. And I grew up and I got out of Brooklyn because I got pretty good at Wghting. And winning. Or else, intimidating my would-be adversaries with my Wsts, my feet...

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