The Rumpus Prize first place winner in poetry is “Ode to the Black Man Nod” by Georgio Russell. Prize judge Kaveh Akbar chose this poem from many submissions, and had this to say about our winner: “It’s not just the formal agility here that soars, its language dazzles in the micro and the macro. This poem is elegant but durable, heady but also deeply felt. I love so much the ingenuity in affording each surging river and lush tributary and gentle rivulet of language its own integrity, its own tectonic firmness.”
Ode to the Black Man Nod:
This is the gesture from the high ledge
to hear the echo journey safely back
from another plateau
at all times a fugitive from the cast-
who will use this salute to spell
the raising and dipping of a sacred wafer
to the passerby’s sublime body,
alien and -philial — this is telepathy
planted back when we were
men and women turned to brutish
whispering things through the dark
— this is the shoulder’s good sag after
and again we are aware of our own rarity
to know where not to walk wearing
your blood while it has its highest
mood, not the spillage, as in this nod that is
a knack for rhythm that seems innate
the ease with which we boogie
and like Lamar’s thirsty rage nowadays, this is
to make each other know that nothing
against a brother will be allowed
if you are prepared to trash the temple
either by the means of Mister Malcolm or…
this is the lamp in the marsh, the loving Swing
and any nigga can avow with this nod
what lingos yo-yo from the mouth
sure that you will call your mother and wa-
it, wait for her to answer with inv-
nah, with the spirit of infinite welcome.
this is, this is the yes I know god is good
though it is irrelevant whose heaven you used
when you recalled the face of your father
the greatest debt, this is the yes I am happy
humming now how all they take can be
the price tag of a durag for all we really gave
here: can you see the emperor nekkid, too?
or not? This is to empty the question
could you kindly, cuzzo, megaphone my alibi
that I was here at this hour and whole and
may we make this pact in this moment
that we’ll leave a seat to bridge a bruised distance,
A Contrapuntal
this is the lighthouse beacon calling
a homie who mimes the same motion
where, like Abel’s brother, he is standing cast out
of-Eden streets, a voice twinning two shades
this is the biased angle of the head,
of bread that begs to bear witness
to Othello, you haply black, equally
of the mojo vein and the euro-root
in the hot property of the never-nodding
builders of this slippery paradise
and the wretched stenches of our cabins.
one of our Lazari reverses into Tuesday
here and elsewhere, all soils sordid, this is
any tone that iterates the ocean or
flame and can flow according to its own
like the leaky zill of a tambourine
to them who finna find a way to condemn
any time the quiet hops to hectic
how we sound a war-ready rev
in this valley of weapons formed
to stifle life, this is to say I am prepared
so long as we remain iric by the end
in the mercy route of the Reverend or…
Low to the ground and below the gourd,
I don’t care what register, what accent
you call your mama with, just en–
ter her house with the same ring and vis–
iting reverence, with the same small
Tokens of love, hello beyond the dap, this is
all the time and all the time recite some grace
to remedy what you once thought
of all the people you wanted to survive
to feel your walk-by breeze, always
replaced with faith — this is to ponder
in this senescent kingdom, this is to ask
oh, say, can you see this gulp of a dumpling
trapped like a jazz scat within my throat
if they ever come for me could you say
that I was neither toting nor toking
and before we both are vapor let us sign
this decree in the tilt of our unsevered heads.
