The Block Before Columbus
The neighbors never called nine-one-
one on us. Not when I spent a summer
learning to ride a bike in the hallways
of our apartment building. Not when
a neighbor’s door played goalpost and
we took turns launching penalty kicks.
Not when we threw water balloons off
the fire escapes in bombardment of rats
below—if we got too close to humans
they knew who our families were and
some had permission to scold and shame
us out of bedlam—Not then and not when
we littered the air of the front stoop with
laughter way past dusk, trying to expel
a summer heat that made a kiln out of
upper-floor apartments. Not one, ever. &
someone was always watching us. & when
the police stopped to interrogate our laughter,
flipping the lint out of our pockets & breaking
up what didn’t need to be broken, the neighbors
vouched & pleaded. Some of us were still taken
for questioning, for good measure—the rest often
kept vigil in the lobby. & and on most nights, we
avoided the stoop altogether. & some pled & fled
& stopped laughing as loud & hung out less. Still
the police kept coming though no one called 9-1-1.
It’s a paradox: every poem is an otherness. It represents a point-of-view, personal history, approach to language, rhythmic sensibility, dance with despair and embrace of beauty – all of which are wholly distinct from that of the person reading the poem. And yet, again and again, we find poets whose unique voices somehow resonate with our own, enlarge our boundaries, shine light into parts of our lives we may not have even realized were there. Walt Whitman, in that revolutionary book Leaves of Grass, begins his poetic accounting of the American experience: “I celebrate myself,/ And what I assume you shall assume,/ For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” Centuries later, that declaration, that belief in a radical commonality, still strikes me as being central in determining America’s survival, and humanity’s.
Enzo Silon Surin is certainly a son of Whitman – and the American panorama he surveys is in some respects remarkably different from that of the good gray poet, and in other ways devastatingly unchanged. Haitian-born, he grew up in Queens, New York City and that experience is a visceral presence in his first full-length collection, When My Body Was A Clinched Fist (Black Lawrence Press, 2020), as well as a brand-new manuscript from which today’s poem is taken, making its debut as a Red Letter. Enzo is a poet, educator, speaker, and social advocate; as the founding editor and publisher of Central Square Press here in the Boston-area, he’s created a small, independent literary press that publishes thought-provoking and high-quality poetry reflecting a commitment to social justice. Even when race is not the explicit subject of one of Enzo’s poems, it is a context that illuminates every situation. I too grew up in Queens; that I did not have to be so acutely aware of such things during my formative years is an essential element of the privilege I’d been afforded. Reading a poem like “The Block…”, I can’t help thinking of all the wild, stupid, utterly normal moments of my adolescence – and how different they’d have been if suddenly the police – or even the threat of such scrutiny – had been involved. That Enzo survived that circumstance – in large part due to the way his community embraced its members – and developed from it a creative force that would not be suppressed or co-opted, is something every lover of language can celebrate.