Fantasia for the Man in Blue

By Tommye Blount

In his debut collection Fantasia for the Man in Blue, Tommye Blount orchestrates a chorus of distinct, unforgettable voices that speak to the experience of the black, queer body as a site of desire and violence. A black man’s late-night encounter with a police officer—the titular “man in blue”—becomes an extended meditation on a dangerous erotic fantasy. The late Luther Vandross, resurrected here in a suite of poems, addresses the contradiction between his public persona and a life spent largely in the closet: “It’s a calling, this hunger / to sing for a love I’m too ashamed to want for myself.” In “Aaron McKinney Cleans His Magnum,” the convicted killer imagines the barrel of the gun he used to bludgeon Matthew Shepard as an “infant’s small mouth” as well as the “sad calculator” that was “built to subtract from and divide a town.” In these and other poems, Blount viscerally captures the experience of the “other” and locates us squarely within these personae.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Four Way Books
• Release date: Mar 2, 2020
• ISBN: 9781945588655

Book preview

Fantasia for the Man in Blue

Tommye Blount

Four Way Books

Tribeca

More Praise for Tommye Blount

I have been waiting for this miracle of a book to come out for so long without understanding why—until I was finally allowed to read it from start to finish, first in one big gulp, then slower, with the kind of leisurely pleasure I might otherwise reserve for dessert. Pay attention to the lyric lightness, the vivid and philosophical diction, the keen function of form, the grasp of history and its consequences. Then indulge in the satisfaction in language, the refashioning of myth, and, perhaps there is no other way to say this: the STYLE, honey. Tommye Blount is one of our greatest writers because he is willing to do what is so difficult: hold poems to exacting and crucial standards. This book was written not by a master, but a virtuoso.

—Tarfia Faizullah

Copyright © 2020 Tommye Blount

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Blount, Tommye, author.

Title: Fantasia for the man in blue / Tommye Blount.

Description: First edition. | Tribeca : Four Way Books, [2020] |

Identifiers: LCCN 2019031755 | ISBN 9781945588495 (trade paperback)

Subjects: LCGFT: Poetry.

Classification: LCC PS3602.L679 F36 2020 | DDC 811/.6--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019031755

This book is manufactured in the United States of America and printed on acid-free paper.

Four Way Books is a not-for-profit literary press. We are grateful for the assistance we receive from individual donors, public arts agencies, and private foundations.

This publication is made possible with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts

and from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency,

We are a proud member of the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses.

ISBN-13: 978-1-945588-65-5 (electronic)

Contents

Fantasia for the Man in Blue

I

How Sweet this Great Land

Americana Elegy

My God, Lick Him Clean

The Button

The Purse Thieves

Historical Site

Late Show at the Americana

Framing Debra Shaw

Proscenium

The Laugh

Phonophobia

At the Mercury Theater,

Blood Harmony

The Pool

II

Fantasia for the Man in Blue

Leroy Auditions for the Fame School

The Ballad of Bobby Blake

Castro Supreme Finally Speaks

Ode to Chub Porn

Not an Elegy for Erik Rhodes

Diesel Washington Demonstrates The Bully

Thug on Thug

Are you clean,

Bareback Aubade with the Dog

And the dog comes back

The Runts

Lycanthropy

Palmer Park

The bug

Fable of the Beast

Niggas’ Revenge

Arcane Torso on Grindr

The Weather, the Weather

What sort of bird

III

Fantasia for the Man in Blue

Icarus Does the Dishes

The Suit

Geppetto’s Lament

Of a Wicked Boy

Aaron McKinney Cleans His Magnum

Of his daughter’s hair,

Portrait of My Father

Leda

Hardheaded Aubade

The Bug Chaser

The Singing Head of Orpheus

Do you have anything

IV

Dear Latrice Royale

The Lady Chablis as Herself

Rest Stop in Rawsonville, Michigan

The Hunger of Luther Vandross

Luther Vandross Sings Bowie

Luther Dreams of Aretha Franklin’s Gown

Bling Elegy

Fantasia for the Man in Blue

Notes

This is what makes me feel niggerish, I’m afraid: being watched.

Fantasia for the Man in Blue

You know good and well you can’t be out here

in the dark morning to take in

the moon—full as the bowl of light

attached to this police cruiser. Like a grayed

elephant shoots air through its trunk

before it charges off to safety

from a mouse in one of those old black

and white cartoons, you