
VMrn, The HPIC
#NPM Day 12- Where I'm From
Prompt: Where I'm from
There was a shoot out
one summer day
when I was a kid.
I was outside with my cousin between my family's building and my grandmother's building.
I probably could have been shot
deciding to walk through where the action was
to the safest place I knew.
Gamey's house.
I'd never seen my mother so worried and so mystified that my first response wasn't to just come home.
There was another one
a Sunday morning
years later.
I was with my dad and we were going to church early because I was in the youth choir.
We could have been shot.
That's where I'm from.
When I was in the 3rd grade
Spike Lee decided to film Clockers.
One morning my dad and oldest younger brother were in my grandmother's building.
He couldn't have been older than 3 or 4 years old.
Harvey Keitel
was
in
the
building
too.

Probably for a scene.
He thought my little brother, with his long braids
and high yellow
pretty self
was a girl.
This was the year I was pissed at Spike Lee.
My walking route to school was wholly interrupted.
That's where I'm from.
50 cent Marino's icees,
flipping them over and experiencing a completely different texture,
being fearless and licking wooden sticks,
fearless of splinters,
buying 4
and stacking them in brown paper bags:
the definition of wealthy.
Playing in project building hallways,
sitting
laying
carefreeing
on their floors
and surviving:
the definition of privilege.
Mystics from the corner store
and those sparkling carbonated drinks.
25 cent bags of Doritos they now shamefully put in $3.99 joints.
Penny candy
that was 5 and 10 cents
by the time it got around to us.
Summer meals at schools I didn't go to.
Unashamedly.
Project rivalry
superiority.
Project pride.
Block parties.
Heros and baconeggncheese before the gringos discovered it.
That's where I'm from.