Remain Uncomfortable

Today we have a poem that really speaks to what our nation is going through, and what black people have to go through on a regular basis. We will take a look at Terrance Hayes's poem "Talk"  Link to his Bio: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/terrance-hayes BPP Email: BasementPoetryPod@gmail.com Transcription of the Poem:  Talk like a nigger now, my white friend, M, said after my M.L.K. and Ronald Reagan impersonations, the two of us alone and shirtless in the locker room, and if you're thinking my knuckles knocked a few times against his jaw or my fingers knotted at his throat, you're wrong because I pretended I didn't hear him, and when he didn't ask it again, we slipped into our middle school uniforms since it was November, the beginning of basketball season, and jogged out onto the court to play together in that vision Americans wish for their children, and the point is we slipped into our uniform harmony, and spit out GO TEAM! our hands stacked on and beneath the hands of our teammates and that was as close as I may have come to passing for one of the members of The Dream, my white friend thinking I was so far from that word that he could say it to me, which I guess he could since I didn't let him taste the salt and iron in the blood, I didn't teach him what it's like to squint through a black eye, and if I had to wonder if he would have grown up to be the kind of white man who believes all blacks are thugs or if he would have learned to bite his tongue or let his belly be filled by shame, but more importantly, would I be the kind of black man who believes silence is worth more than talk or that it can be a kind of grace, though I'm not sure that's the kind of black man I've become, and in any case, M, wherever you are, I'd just like to say I heard it, but let it go, because I was afraid to lose our friendship or afraid we'd lose the game -- which we did anyway.