monday poem #295: Jamaal May, "Pomegranate Means Grenade" (original) (raw)

Because I can't say it better, I will steal from the back of the book: Natasha Trethewey describes Hum as "concerned with what's beneath the surfaces of things—the unseen that eats away at us or does the work of sustaining us," "a meditation on the machinery of living, an extended ode to sound and silence."

A search for more info about Jamaal May introduced me to Split This Rock and their social justice poetry database, which I am linking here to remind myself to poke around in it some more.

Pomegranate Means Grenade

The heart trembles like a herd of horses. — Jontae McCrory, age 11

Hold a pomegranate in your palm.
Imagine ways to split it. Think of the breaking
skin as shrapnel. Remember granada
means pomegranate and granada
means grenade because grenade
takes its name from the fruit;
identify war by what it takes away
from fecund orchards. Jontae,
these are the arms they will fear from you.
There will always be at least one like you:
a child who gets the picked-over box
with mostly black crayons. One who wonders
what beautiful has to do with beauty as he darkens
a sun in the corner of every page,
constructs a house from ashen lines,
sketches stick figures lying face down—
I know how often red is the only color
left to reach for. I fear for you.
My heart trembles like a herd of horses.
You are writing a stampede into my chest.
This is the same thumping anxiety that shudders
me when I push past marines in high school
hallways, moments after their video footage
of young men dropping from helicopters
in night vision goggles. I want you to see
in the dark without covering your face,
carry verse as countermeasure to recruitment videos,
and remember the cranes buried inside the poems
painted on banners that hung in Tiananmen Square—
remember because Huang Xiang was exiled
for these, exiled for this, the calligraphy of revolt.
You stand nameless in front of a tank against
those who would rather see you pull a pin
from a grenade than pull a pen
from your backpack. Jontae,
they are afraid.

— Jamaal May
from Hum

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