Locomotion Read Online Free PDF Page A

laughs
Guess they can’t see the basket so good though, huh?
she says.
But she’s only joking.
Then she leans against the school yard fence
and I take a few more shots
and they go in
Swish. Swish. Swish.
    Â 
    I want to say I found God, Lili.
And throw up my hands.
And grin like somebody’s big old fool.

POETRY POEM
    You don’t just get to write a poem once
You gotta write it over and over and over
until it feels real good to you
And sometimes it does
and sometimes it doesn’t
That’s what’s really great
and really stupid
about poetry.

ERIC POEM
    Lamont comes back on Monday morning
but Eric doesn’t
Ms. Marcus stands up in front of the class and coughs.
Not a real cough. The kind of cough
grown-ups get when they’d rather not
be talking to you.
The tall lady from the agency gets that cough
when I ask her if me and Lili ever gonna live
together again.
    Â 
    Ms. Marcus says I have some sad news
Eric is in the hospital.
She says he has a disease
and some of his cells are shaped funny.
And sometimes, she says, that makes his life very painful.
Can you catch it from him? Angel asks, looking scared.
’Cause me and him was hanging a lot and I don’t want
no disease.
No, Ms. Marcus says. It’s not contagious.
She draws a shape on the board.
Does anybody know what a sickle is, she says.
Nobody raises their hand.
I know what a sickle is. Slaves used it to cut
sugarcane and stuff.
I know a lot of other kids know too
but our minds are busy wrapping themselves around
Eric
and all the pain in his body and how
we never knew he had no disease.
Ms. Marcus explains what a sickle is.
Then she says, Eric has sickle-cell anemia.
She coughs again and says
It’s a disease that’s common . . .
She stops talking
looks around the room for a minute
then she kind of whispers
among African Americans.
    Â 
    There’s six Puerto Ricans in our class—
Manny, Lourdes, Jillian,
Samantha, Carlos, and Sophia.
There’s two Dominicans—Angel and Maritza.
Gina and Cara are from Trinidad and
Guy is from Jamaica.
All the rest of us are from right here.
All the rest of us are African American.
Everyone looks around the room at everybody else.
    Â 
    Do you die with that, Lamont wants to know.
Not directly, Ms. Marcus says. But she doesn’t explain
and nobody asks any more questions about dying.
    Â 
    How long they gonna keep him
    in the hospital? Somebody else wants to know.
    Â 
    I don’t know, Ms. Marcus says.
His mother doesn’t know yet, Ms. Marcus says.
Let’s hope not long though, Ms. Marcus says.
Ms. Marcus says.
Ms. Marcus says.
Ms. Marcus says and the words circle
round the room, bounce off the walls
keep zooming
past my head.
Zip! Zap!
Like they’re banging against it.
    Â 
    I thought, Ms. Marcus says
we could make him a card.
    Â 
    I take a deep breath and put my head down on my
desk.
I try not to think of Eric’s angel voice singing in
church.
I try not to think of us shooting hoops together at
lunchtime.
My throat feels all choky though anyway.
My whole body feels bent out of shape and strange.
The last time Miss Edna came home and found me
crying she said Think
about all the stuff you love, Lonnie.
    Let those things fill your head.
    Â 
    Popsicle
Icicle
Bicycle
    Â 
    Sickle cell.
    Â 
    Popsicle
Icicle
Bicycle
    Â 
    Sickle cell.

LAMONT
    Lamont comes in mad on Wednesday.
Ms. Marcus makes believe she doesn’t see him sitting
over there with his arms folded,
his face all scrunched up staring out the window, his
back the only thing facing front.
Let’s take out our poetry notebooks, Ms. Marcus says.
I want to work on haiku again today.
I don’t like forms. I like free verse when you can write
anything you want
any way you want but Ms. Marcus says
there’s a time for form and a time for free verse
which I think is a stupid, very teacher thing to say.
I ain’t writing no poetry, Lamont says. No black guys be
writing