The Blue Seuss by Terrance Hayes

from Wind in a Box

Blacks in one box
Blacks in two box
Blacks on
Blacks stacked in boxes stacked on boxes
Blacks in boxes stacked on shores
Blacks in boxes stacked on boats in darkness
Blacks in boxes do not float
Blacks in boxes cut their losses
Blacks on boat docks
Blacks on auction
Blacks on wagons
Blacks with masters in the houses
Blacks with bosses in the fields
Blacks in helmets toting rifles
Blacks in Harlem toting banjoes boots and quilts
Blacks on foot
Blacks on busses
Blacks on backwood hardwood stages singing blues
Blacks on Broadway singing too
Blacks can Charleston
Blacks can foxtrot
Blacks can bebop
Blacks can moonwalk
Blacks can beatbox
Blacks can run fast too
Blacks on
Blacks and
Blacks on knees and
Blacks on couches
Blacks on Good Times
Blacks on Roots
Blacks on Cosby
Blacks in voting booths are
Blacks in boxes
Blacks beside
Blacks in row of houses are
Blacks in boxes too

I should probably preface any other discussion of this poem with the fact that it was published in Wind in a Box in 2006, before the most recent controversy around Dr. Seuss’s racist imagery. Although that context perhaps adds extra significance onto this poem which effectively adopts a Seussian voice to narrate an extremely simplified version of black history in the United States. This is one of many poems in the book titled “The Blue <Person>” where the people emulated run the gamut from Amiri Baraka to David Bowie to Jorge Luis Borges.

There’s so much to like about this poem, from its structural conceit to the way that single words are phrases are used to evoke historical events (“busses” invoking Rosa Parks for example) to how Terrance draws so much sonically in single lines (“Blacks in boxes stacked on boats in darkness”).

I don’t know that I want or need to say much more other than Terrance Hayes is amazing, and you should read everything you can by him.