Can I Kick It?

Idris Goodwin

• Publisher: Haymarket Books
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781642590845
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Music
• Index: Literature

Award-winning poet and playwright Idris Goodwin interrogates and remixes our cultural past in order to make sense of our present and potential futures.

Breaking Sweat

PART ONE:

“Cardio”

I have joined a gym

Exercise an occasional fling

a once in a while oh you again

But the life expectancy of a Black man is sixty-seven

On that treadmill

I walk, not too fast

Just trying to warm up

The televisions lined above peer down smirking

As I increase speed—cautiously

Taking it easy

Not trying to be no hero

Above

Today’s latest cell phone video is dissected

Opposing neckties

Side by side

vertical rectangles

Ping-pong their way through the familiar

Closed-caption tries to keep up

I am walking a little faster now

A new headline visual

The desert blows a thin beam of smoke

back up toward the sky that struck it

before commercials for insurance

and faster internet

Around me machines whir

and bodies grunt and grasp for air

A symphony pushing its presence

through the hip-hop in my headphones

When we return

The CDC says certain threats are inevitable

Certain viruses have our names and addresses

So do these drones

we are told we’re destined to meet

Now I’m jogging

Slowly (you know)

Inside my headphones

Kendrick Lamar declares our survival

But I ain’t here to be alright

thirty dollars will not be directly withdrawn from my checking account

on a monthly basis for alright

Nah we gon be better than alright

All of us

Under these fluorescent lights

The other new parents out to acquire the hourglass

The wounded warriors learning new limbs

The seniors, here to shake the alright colors

from our straining tendons

We look down to watch numbers

slowly make their climb

Calories

Heart Rate

Elapsed time

We add up death tolls along borders—In deserts

But also—classrooms—

and even city streets on a Sunday morning

And we in this workshop

This body shop

This sweat house of best intention

This church of kinetic holiness

We thank God for that safety

As we sweat

Each of us

running for our lives

PART TWO:

“Another Black Body”

This body is mine

But, also, political

When it stands, how it walks

with a bop

that’s centrifugal

This body was once considered 3/5 of a human’s

This body birthed by a woman

Who was birthed by a woman in a city of black alloy

This body fled before the rust settled

This body nomadic

Moving through zip codes propelled by static

This body don’t do neckties

it wears hoodies

ball caps

T-shirts

sneakers

This body needs freedom

This body stay in headlines

Hunted

Some say

Hated

Some say

This body celebrated when adorned with gold and vest

And nine shot ventilated by smith and wes

This body know hung...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Contents
• Back to the Afro-Future, 1965
• We Wear the Metal Face
• World of Rap
• T.R.O.Y.
• How to Rhyme in the Cipher
• Wu-Tang Is for the Children: An Ode to the Clean Version
• DJ Khaled Loves You
• Pop Off
• Break Down
• Harriet Tubman to Kanye West
• The Rain
• More Statues Need High Heels
• Give the People What They Want: A Second Ode to Isiah Thomas
• The Meaning of the Dunk
• Of the Lord
• Ashy to Classy: An Ode to Lotion
• Factory
• Tao of House Party
• Ferris Bueller’s Black Friend
• The Walking Dead
• Game of Thrones
• Taken
• How to Listen to Gospel: An Ode to Naomi Shelton
• The Wiz Live from the Brown Theatre, Louisville, KY, December 2018
• Lil Nas X Brings the Country Together
• An Invitation from a Tribe Called Tomorrow to Those Broken by Today (2019 Remix)
• Lost in Space, August 23, 2016
• Avengers
• Breaking Sweat
• Bonus Track: Say My Name
• Back Cover