On Survivor’s Guilt, ending with “Ruff Ryders’ Anthem” by DMX

Abstract

on Survivor’s Guilt, ending with “Ruff Ryders’ Anthem” by DMX Anthony Thomas Lombardi (bio) Keywords Anthony, Lombardi, poetry, DMX, addiction, Prospect Park, Brooklyn after Anne Sextonfor Scott & all beloveds lost to the disease of addiction i thought i saw your face, your unmistakablegait on the 6 train—i’m wrong.blessings refused maybeor imagined.it is May. i am tired of being naive.in Springs past, i have made mint julepsfor prim mouths grown wild beneathwide brims while men cinched into uniformwhipped horses, drank at the waters of Lethe& i too am not blameless of bruteforce in the service of darkening soil.i have forgotten that old friends are dead.my beloved wears a blue threadbare shirtof her old school’s hockey team, gamesshe’d attend purely to see two bodiesexchange a violence that looked like love,the way waves crest when givingis no longer an option.at what point does the body ceaseits sovereignty & become a thingto be plucked & played?if you’re lucky, it will bring you to your knees.i walk past a movie theater,everyone outside seems so displeasedcast in the lobby’s static glow.is it not enough to sit somewhere [End Page 259] dark & see a beautiful face, huge?in Prospect Park, DMX’s face spillsoff a man’s t-shirt, the kind we wearwith kin round the way, old photoskissed by clouds, lurid as a bullhornto squeeze another drop of lifeloudly out of the lost. X barksthen escapes the mourner’shands like he’s cheatingsome untoward coda, fingerson a speaker’s knob coaxingthe crocuses to stand in salute.the cherry blossoms todayblooming finally & one fallswith a hustler’s grace, spinsthen perches on my shoulder, remainsa moment, without a breezeanother petal, perhaps racingto dismantle the distance, eddiesbehind, pining, staccatoas X commands stop.drop. lands, covering the scaron my open palm, the otherblessing me one more bowbefore coming to rest amongst the soil. [End Page 260] Anthony Thomas Lombardi anthony thomas lombardi is a multiple Pushcart-nominated poet, organizer, activist, and educator. He is the founder and director of Word is Bond, a community-centered reading series partnered with AAWW that raises funds for transnational relief efforts and mutual aid organizations, and currently serves as assistant poetry editor for Sundog Lit. A recipient of the Poetry Project’s Emerge-Surface-Be Fellowship, his work has appeared or will soon in Guernica, Gulf Coast, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, North American Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn with his cat, Dilla. Footnotes Lines 27-28 are used with permission from Mike Ginn (@shutupmikeginn) Copyright © 2022 The Massachusetts Review, Inc