Joshua Kryah
Managing Editor Lisa Ampleman: What does a English Renaissance–era writer have to do with contemporary race relations? In this poem, Joshua Kryah brings together a reconsideration of the playwright and poet Ben Jonson, who once killed a man in a duel, and a contemporary scene in which a neighbor with ready racist comments also suffers from a serious illness. Coming in a hair longer than our usual miCRo requirements, this gripping poem contains a moment that acts as a counterpart to the death of Renisha McBride, shot and killed on a porch as she asked for help. On this porch, though, the threatening element is something else entirely. Kryah helps us see our current moment more clearly by looking back to Jonson’s story; his account demonstrates the complex humanity of all involved.
To hear Joshua read his poem, click below:
Jonson, They Say
Ben Jonson, they say, let himself kill a man. Then, after, the letter M for murderer tattooed on his thumb. “All this,” he wrote, “was done to me by someone else.” And because he spoke Latin spent only weeks in jail. My neighbor wants them all locked up, because “them blacks can’t be trusted,” because “they mess everything up.” In Jonson’s journal, “go away, go away,” written page after page. But still someone bangs at the door to be let in. My neighbor stands on the porch, shirtless, scared, a man dying and asking for help. The cancer, he says, has “got bad.” It’s left him “all done, all tore up.” Even though King James forgave him, Jonson later wrote, “Hate hangs in trees, smells like dogs.” Surely, my neighbor knows about the dogs. How every day, through yards, along the street, leading to his house, they leave the red marks behind them, where their thumbs press down.
Joshua Kryah is the author of the poetry collections Glean and We Are Starved. He lives in St. Louis, Missouri.
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