Poem: “Ode to Big Trend” by Terrance Hayes

0 Posted by - August 24, 2024 - Black History, BLACK MEN, History, LATEST POSTS

Terrance Hayes is an American poet and educator who has published five poetry collections. His 2010 collection, Lighthead, won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2010.

Born in Columbia, South Carolina, poet Terrance Hayes earned a BA at Coker College and an MFA at the University of Pittsburgh. In his poems, in which he occasionally invents formal constraints, Hayes considers themes of popular culture, race, music, and masculinity.

Hayes’s poetry collections include How to Be Drawn (2015), finalist for the National Book Award and the National Books Critics Circle Award; Lighthead (2010), which won the National Book Award, was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award, and was nominated for a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; Wind in a Box (2006); Hip Logic (2002), chosen for the National Poetry Series and also a finalist for an LA Times Book Award and an Academy of American Poets James Laughlin Award; and Muscular Music (1999), which won a Kate Tufts Discovery Award.

Ode to Big Trend

By Terrance Hayes
Pretty soon the Negroes were looking to get paid.
My partner, Big Trend, wiped his ox neck and said
He wasn’t going to wait too much longer. You
Know that look your daddy gets before he whups you?
That’s how Big Trend looked. There was a pink scar
Meddling his forehead. Most people assumed a bear
Like him couldn’t read anything but a dollar,
But I’d watched him tour the used bookstore
In town and seen him napping so I knew he held more
Than power in those hands. They could tear
A Bible in two. Sometimes on the walk home I’d hear
Him reciting poems. But come Friday, he was the one
The fellas asked to speak to the boss. He’d go alone,
Usually, and left behind, we imagined the boss buckled
Into Trend’s shadow because our money always followed.
 source:
 https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/50787/ode-to-big-trend

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