“Who Owns This Body, Really?”

“If I am successful, my people will make eye contact with you, and our dialogue will begin,” wrote the late artist Robert Ernst Max, whose painting “Oh What a Tangled Web We Weave” adorns the cover of Luther Hughes’ powerful debut book of poetry, A Shiver in the Leaves. Hughes’ poems make eye contact. By successfully weaving his own experiences and point of view in response to a wide range of visual art, song lyrics, other poems and current news, he brings the reader not only into relationship with the speaker, but also into societal conversations about race, sexuality and the crushing weight of violence. 

A Shiver in the Leaves. BOA Editions, Ltd. 88 pp. $17.

Through the arc of the collection, he explores different aspects of his identity and how he experiences them in the contested spaces of today’s United States. He examines his memories and feelings by grounding the poems in the body. The vivid imagery speaks deeply about how one comes to terms with conflict, the uncertainty of life and certainty of death, and how the speaker and the reader can make personal choices about how to live in the midst of violence, love and possibilities. 

The opening poem, “Tenor,” is an ekphrastic poem in response to Jean-Michael Basquiat’s painting of the same title. It sets the tone and the themes for the rest of Hughes’ book. How the poem lays on the page allows the reader to pause on each word:

I wanted
so much of today
to be peaceful,
but the empty crow
untethers
a feral yearning
for love
that is so full
of power,
of tenderness,
the words fall
to their knees
begging for mercy
like tulips in wind.

Images of the crow, of “feral” longing and how “words fall/to their knees,” give a physicality to Hughes’ writing, which continues to be reflected throughout the rest of the collection. Ideas of yearning, power and tenderness repeat throughout the book as well, and echo in the closing poem.

The next seven lines make a statement about the speaker’s point of view, subtly telling the reader how to approach the poems that will follow. He doesn’t claim to be a victim. Rather, he says he has learned the distinction between “giving up/and giving in” and speaks to his memories from the understanding that distance provides:

I don’t wear the crown
for the times power
has tainted my body,
but I can tell
the difference
between giving up
and giving in.

The daily impact of being queer and black are reflected in the next lines: “I have wanted/nothing/to do with blackness/or laughter/or my life./“But, about love,/who owns the right,/really?”  Given America’s history with black bodies, the language choice of asking “who owns” carries much weight. As the poem addresses the speaker’s inability to escape his own blackness: “…the mirror/with its taunting, the crows that belong to their scripture,” Hughes asks yet another question: “Can you imagine/being so tied to blackness/even your wings/cannot help you escape?” 

Depression, drug use and suicidal thoughts are important themes in this poem. The speaker seems to be asking the reader what personal agency really means and how to manage despair: 

About my life
every needle,
a small prayer.
every pill, a funeral
hymn.
I wanted the end
several times
but thought,
Who owns this body, really?
God?
Dirt?
The silly insects
that will feast
on my decay?
Is it the boy
who entered first
or the boy
who wanted everything
to last?

The poems that follow “Tenor” probe the speaker’s relationship with this particularly essential question: “Who owns this body, really?” Depending on the time and place, the poet seems to suggest the answer could be any and all of the following: society, the police, his lovers, the church, his parents, God, the earth, the insects who will claim his body following burial and, finally, himself. 

We see a progression in the speaker’s relationship with himself, as he appears to gain a sense of clarity through his reflections and questions. “Making the Bed,” is one turning point within the book. Written in quatrains, it describes a scene of the speaker closely observing his boyfriend making their bed. The poem beautifully brings in the senses of sight, smell, touch and hearing and questions who has ultimate power over the speaker’s life, using the lens of myth and religion. We see the boyfriend smell the sheets fresh out of the dryer, pull the fitted sheets on as “his blades flirt/….//More puissant,/he becomes fictional. He tucks//

the second sheet under the mattress
along the ribs. His arms unzip
a lightning bolt when he whips
the clever ocean across.

What god gave him sovereignty
over ordinary things in my life?
……………………………..

Lyrics from Mary Mary (a contemporary gospel group), an earlier image of a bull, of Zeus, and of Adam’s ribs, open the poem to be more than just a simple reminiscence. The speaker is grappling with what it means to be alive within his own body. The last quatrain and, especially, the last line provide a wonderful double entendre that combines a simple observation with a religious reference. In this ending, he reckons with the thought of what it means to be imbued with divinity:

….I am watching him,

my man, and I am wanting us
as we were last night before
we finished and became a moat
of constellations. He fluffs each pillow

as he always does, has.
He checks his work. It was good.

“A Shiver in the Leaves” is the book’s title poem and I asked myself why. How does Hughes see his collection centered around this poem? A shiver is a quiet movement, a stealthy approach, an unexpected breeze across one’s skin. There is no sudden or loud revelation where the speaker comes to terms with all the complexity of his life. It is, in fact, more like the shiver of a body against a tree, which not only speaks to the violence of lynching, it is a shiver that disturbs and breaks silence. 

The collection breaks silence on a number of topics, one of which is racial violence against black bodies. In “A Shiver in the Leaves,” the reader is forced to see the results of such violence: “A muss of flies showers his open mouth/where the blood crusts.//Dead he will not speak.//I can see how pain chewed the neck.” There is an emptiness in the silence of a tortured body, and, often, around our connection to memory. Hughes addresses this as he writes: “It is dawn in the man’s eyes,/a cavern, a slow thaw to memory//I look/and look/and look.” The reader must look as well.

Hughes writes: “Who is to say what death is or is not?” It seems to be partly a matter of reclaiming dignity, not only for the slain man, but for all who are experiencing societal or self-inflicted violence. He is not allowing those who kill to have the last word. Although the lynched man in the poem cannot speak, the speaker will on his behalf. He doesn’t shy away from the brutality and reality of this death as it presents itself on the tree. By paying sacred, close attention, he honors the taken life within his short and sometimes single lines and graphic imagery. 

The speaker invites the reader to consider what it means to live in a black and queer body in the face of a society that actively chooses to destroy both physically and psychologically anyone who does not fit into white, heteronormative paradigms. Through these poems, the speaker is also looking at how one can find joy despite one’s inner turmoil and unresolved pain. 

Perhaps the title poem’s closing lines provide another answer: the value of seeing, of empathy, grief and desire: “I know he is dead, nothing will change/But still I whisper in his ear,/Breathe. I want you to breathe.”

The last poem in the book, “Such Things Require Tenderness,” gives the reader a sense that the speaker has come to terms with himself and has a desire to move toward whatever life brings next. It doesn’t settle or answer all the questions raised throughout the book, but the speaker seems to be clearer about himself and feels more at home in his body and with his memories:

I did what storms do: held

against the frail night,
………………………………..
which by now, as I dissolve into
the cadence of rain, is only memory.

The poet John O’Donohue writes in his book, Anam Cara:  “You should belong first in your own interiority. If you belong there….then you will never be vulnerable when your outside belonging is qualified, relativized or taken away.” Perhaps these poems are Hughes’ work toward belonging to himself, to his memories and to history: becoming comfortable within his own truths. Which is, after all, the universal struggle we share. Which is why his poems resonate beyond himself and open the conversation for each of his readers:

        - The rain is clearing.
I hold out my hand.