Rayon Lennon
FOLLOW ME
to the teenage black employee who followed me, a black man, in a grocery store
Imagine there’s no light between us and all we know is the darkness that binds us while I decide if I desire 2 percent or whole milk. You trail 12 feet behind as I push a cart of goods like a baby. You’re a kid, it seems, a boy of no more than 19 buried in your cell, looking once or twice my way. Your white gray manager nods oppression. You don’t think to puncture commands from high. You spin time into money. Your work reduced to studying people like you and me to see whether I’m worth more than the overflowing cart I struggle to steer. I have known this earth for 37 years. I know a few many things, like everything is connected, like slavery to now. You follow me like an overseer with spoiled power. I pause at the Aunt Jemima syrups which are bitter with stereotypes. You follow me to the self-checkout counter, pretending to still be lost in your cell. I scan each item and pay for it all with the sum I earn as an in-home family therapist empowering kids your age to climb above systems. I show teeth and tell you to have a warm week. You say you were only doing your job. Yes, I don’t say. The job of keeping racism alive. The light butcher shakes his caged dreads. Like us, tanked lobsters battle each other with taped claws. —from Rattle #74, Winter 2021
Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist
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Rayon Lennon: “I was 13 the first time I was followed in a store. I had just moved from Jamaica to Hamden, Connecticut. The male employee followed me in the dollar store as I looked at items. For some reason, he thought I was there to steal. I didn’t understand it. I had saved up all my lunch money to buy a cheap fake gold chain with a Jamaican flag pendant. After 10 minutes, the man simply asked me to leave. I said I didn’t do anything wrong; I hadn’t stolen anything and didn’t intend to steal anything. He said he was tired of following me. I said I was tired of being followed. He called the police. The snow came before the police. I got on a city bus and saw the police entering the store as the bus moved off. I was 13. America showed me who it was then. It’s particularly disheartening to be 37 and still being followed in stores. It’s even more disheartening when the employee following me is a Black teenage employee (being directed by an oppressive boss). While workshopping this poem, a white member of the group said, ‘Forgive me for sounding ignorant, but why were they following you in the store? What did they think you were going to do?’ It’s such an easy answer. But I thought about it more. Yes. They followed me because they thought I would steal; but they followed me too to try to make me believe I don’t belong, to rob me of my sense of feeling at home in America. Racism is mostly about power—most people don’t want to root it out because they don’t want to lose power/privileges. The Black teen who followed me in the store was probably acting the way he did to share in that power. It’s unfortunate what people must do to survive in this country. I have been asked by managers to do tasks that run counter to my values; I always challenge these requests, but I have made poor decisions as well—decisions which disempowered me and others. A friend said I should have been nicer to the Black teenage employee in the poem. It’s a poem powered by frustration and rage. I didn’t want to take that away from the poem. It’s important that I hold everyone accountable, even an oppressed teen. It’s especially sad and harmful when oppressed people, knowingly and unknowingly, help to spread racist ideology. Awareness is key. I’m a nice guy who only gets angry in my poems. In some ways, I’m not so much angry at the teen as I am angry at a nation which could turn out a vaccine for Covid in a year, but can’t seem to find a social vaccine for racism, centuries later.” (web)
Related* “I, Stutter” by Rayon Lennon * “Unrest” by Rayon Lennon * “Red Brick Town” by Rayon Lennon