{"id":3784,"date":"2011-04-01T00:01:25","date_gmt":"2011-04-01T05:01:25","guid":{"rendered":"\/nashvillereview\/?p=3784"},"modified":"2015-02-17T14:39:16","modified_gmt":"2015-02-17T20:39:16","slug":"langston-blue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/archives\/3784","title":{"rendered":"Langston Blue"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cO Blood of the River of songs,
\nO songs of the River of Blood,\u201d
\n______<\/span>Let me lie down. Let my words<\/p>\n

Lie sound in the mouths of men
\nRepeating their invocations pure
\n______<\/span>And perfect as the moans that<\/p>\n

Mount in the mouth of Bessie Smith.
\nBlues for the angels kicked out
\n______<\/span>Of heaven. Blues for the angels<\/p>\n

Who miss them still. Blues for
\nMy people and whatever water
\n______<\/span>They know. O weary drinkers<\/p>\n

Drinking from the bloody river,
\nWhy go to heaven with Harlem
\n______<\/span>So close? Why sing of rivers<\/p>\n

With a daddy of my own to miss?
\nI remember him and taste a stain
\n______<\/span>Red as blood coursing the body<\/p>\n

Of a man chased by a mob. I write
\nThat running, his sweat: here,
\n______<\/span>He climbs a poplar for the sky,<\/p>\n

But it is only sky. The river?
\nFollow me. You\u2019ll see. We tried
\n______<\/span>To fly and learned we couldn\u2019t<\/p>\n

Swim. Dear singing river full of
\nMy blood, are we as loud under-
\n______<\/span>Water? Is it blood that binds<\/p>\n

Brothers? Or is it the Mississippi
\nRunning through the fattest vein
\n______<\/span>Of America? When I say home,<\/p>\n

I mean I wanted to write some
\nLines. I wanted to hear the blues,
\n______<\/span>But here I am swimming in the river<\/p>\n

Again. What runs through the fat
\nVeins of a drowned body? What
\n______<\/span>America can a body call home?<\/p>\n

When I say Congo, I mean blood.
\nWhen I say Nile, I mean blood.
\n______<\/span>When I say Euphrates, I mean,<\/p>\n

If only you knew how much blood <\/em>
\n We have in common. So much,<\/em>
\n______<\/span>In Louisiana, they call a man like me <\/em><\/p>\n

Red<\/em>. And red was too dark
\nFor my daddy. And my daddy was
\n______<\/span>Too dark for America. He ran<\/p>\n

Like a man from my mother
\nAnd me. And my mother\u2019s sobs
\n______<\/span>Are the songs of Bessie Smith<\/p>\n

Who wears more feathers than
\nDeath. O the death my people refuse
\n______<\/span>To die. When I was 18, I wrote down<\/p>\n

The river though I couldn\u2019t win
\nA race, climbed a tree that winter, then
\n______<\/span>Fell, flat on my wet, red face. Line<\/p>\n

After line, I read all the time,
\nBut \u201cthere was nothing
\n______<\/span>I could do about Race.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jericho Brown<\/a><\/h6>\n

______<\/span><\/p>\n

“Langston Blue” originally appeared in <\/em>New Madrid<\/p>\n

Read An Interview with Jericho Brown<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cO Blood of the River of songs, O songs of the River of Blood,\u201d ______Let me lie down. Let my words Lie sound in the mouths of men Repeating their invocations pure ______And perfect as the moans that Mount in the mouth of Bessie Smith. Blues for the angels kicked out ______Of heaven. Blues for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[25],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Jypy-Z2","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3784"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3784"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10336,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3784\/revisions\/10336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}