For Brothers of the Dragon
a pecha kucha
[PREMONITION]
I dreamed my brother said I’d live with the feeling
a child feels the first time he sees his brother disappear.
I went down on my knees and sure enough, I was the size
of a boy again. With my shins like two skinny tracks in the dirt,
I could almost hear a train carrying its racket up my spine.
[OPENING SCENE]
The day Malcolm X was buried, his brothers were in a motel
watching the funeral on a black-and-white TV. If I were in their story,
I would have run down the assassins and removed their eyes.
It does not matter if this is true, only that it can be conceived.
[HOW FICTION FUNCTIONS]
However else fiction functions, it fills you with the sound
of crows chirping, alive alive alive. But that’s temporary too.
Tell my story, begs the past, as if it was a prayer
for an imagined life or a life that’s better than the life you live.
[SCENE AT THE GRAVE]
I am considering writing a story about the lives the brothers lead
afterward. They will change their names a third time and abandon
their families. They will visit their brother’s grave at Ferncliff.
They will be poor and empty. One will bag the dead man’s bones
while the one holding the shovel begs him to hurry.
[FORESHADOWING]
I keep thinking I’ll have a dream about the smoke clouding
the bar my brother and I used to haunt. We spent hours saying
nothing. He pretended he didn’t know the man raising us was
his father but not mine. Instead I dream about the mouth
of a dragon, the smoke of a train vanishing into a mountainside.
[DRAMATIC ARC]
One brother will want, at first, redemption; one brother will want,
at first, revenge. Their story will be part family saga and elegy,
part mystery. What changes them before the story begins will be,
at first, more important than what changes them when it ends.
[IMAGERY]
I have no problem with the flaws of memory. The bird carcass
stiff as the shoe of a hit-and-run victim on the side of the road
might just be a veil the wind pulled from the face of a new bride.
Why was the imagination invented, if not to remake?
[OPENING DIALOGUE]
The motel’s twin beds will be narrow and dingy. On each pillow
will be a sweating peppermint candy left by a desk clerk
who will sigh the way a mother sighs. “Y'all look like the ghosts
of Malcolm X,” I’ll have her think, carelessly. “Y'all smell like men who slept all night in a boxcar or on a roadside.”
[SYMBOLISM]
However else fiction functions, it fills you with the sounds
of running away. The dirt, the smudged mirror, even the silences
between speech have something to say. In novels
there is no such thing as a useless past or typical day.
[FLASHBACK]
I’m thinking of black boys in the countryside with a white boy
who’d seen, only a summer before, a black man strung up
at the edge of town. They’ll be singing when they drag the white boy
to the river and throw him in. They’ll be singing when they
dive in and drag him back to shore before he drowns.
[STATIC CHARACTERS]
In my novel all the minor characters will look like various friends
and family: Blind Vince Twang, BlackerThanMost, Deadeye Sue,
Lil Clementine. They will be more human than my protagonists
because they will be left with lives that do not change.
[POINT OF VIEW]
The chin of Malcolm’s widow will quiver below her veil.
Where is home now? she’ll think. It will be the wind
of her trembling that moves the veil. I am not going to describe
her face because I want you to think of her as a bride.
[SETTING THAT ILLUMINATES CHARACTER]
When I try remembering dirt, I remember my mother’s pale carpet
stained by mud and my brother on his knees with a hairbrush
and a bar of soap, scrubbing before school. I do not remember
the names of the birds who lived outside our house,
but I know their music was swallowed by the passing trains.
[ALLEGORY]
One brother will tell the other a story: Once, in the shadow of a tree
lit with song, when a black woman unbuttoned her blouse,
all the birds came to dine. It will mean there are people who root
and people who roam; people bound to a place
and people bound to an idea, whatever the idea may be.
[CONNOTATION]
I wish I was not the kind of man who abandons
those who love him repeatedly. My brother must be
one hundred pounds heavier now than he was
all those years ago. Because growing old is like slipping
into a new coat without taking the old coat off,
I think of him bearing the weight of our family.
[DELETED CHAPTER]
You’ll find salt in the eyes of anyone who kneels too long
with his head in the dirt. I should say what happened
to my brother when he was sixteen. My mother found him
naked an weeping to himself in the closet. Because
I wasn’t there, there is no suitable place in the story for this scene.
[FALLING ACTION]
Later both X brothers show up at the widow X’s door and miss
the softer woman she was before. Here, I am not going to say
she forgives them. When she turns them away, I imagine
the sunlight bleeding its heaviness upon their backs.
[METAPHOR]
Because I am a brother of the dragon, call me Dragonfly.
When I dream of the train riding our parallel spines, carrying
our history, the weight that turns my brother into fire, makes me
scattered light. in my story, the X brothers will live
without their brother, but that doesn’t mean they’ll survive.
[ALLUSION TO THEME]
It’s all true: the pair of tracks through the darkeness,
men who look like me, disguised. The bewilderment
that cannot be described. What I feel is Why. In fiction
everything happens with ease, and the easefulness kills me.
[RESOLUTION]
I am full of dirt sometimes. I am trying to tell you a story
without talking. I promise nothing I will write about you
tomorrow will be a lie. Instead of fiction, brother,
I will offer you an apology. And if that fails,
I will drag myself to your arms crying, Speak to me.
by Terrance Hayes
