| PG-13 is a limited edition, hand-bound chapbook confronting the universal challenge of defining one's self. A series of original photographs illustrate. ONLY 125 COPIES BOUND AND SOLD! |
| Jor Don (from PG-13) Brave Jordon, Brave Jordon loose in city streets. Handsome Jordon, Handsome Jordon the ladies want to meet. Clever Jordon, Clever Jordon knows every trick. Tough Jordon, Tough Jordon throwing hands like bricks. Young Jordon, Young Jordon 14 years old. My Jordon, Mama's Jordon heart of solid gold. |
PG-13
for pre-teens, in- betweens, and those in transition.
| Dwight For Barry, from Ms. Younge—May, 2003 From PG-13 Do you know what it’s like to walk up the narrow steps? Do you know what it’s like to walk to the attic of the old one room school house building? Past ALC, past the kids who know and would say except that silence is Mr. Tramble’s rule. See Jason peek from behind the big panels that contain each desk. Hear him hiss, “Ms. Barnes.” Shhhhhhhhh! From your 1st hour you have been called. Mr. Anderson has been appointed to take your class. Up the narrow steps like a child, your heart beats fast. What could you have done wrong? Open the door and see the smiling, brown, jewelry man who stands outside the school and yells at kids like a father, still smiling, dressed as a cop. Badge and all. In the slant of the attic, down two stairs, behind a cherry wood teacher desk convene 3 women so handsome and severe that you imagine the Gorgon, and your eyes hide. The woman seated directly behind the desk has a sweet, stone face like an Olmec. The girl’s basketball coach for the high school stands center, tall and thin as a Georgia Pine. The face of the sister sitting in a chair at the East end of the desk, shoulders as high as the long- legged coach’s waist, tells blues. In a space the size of the W.C. in the Frank annex, a doughy white cop busies himself with a wall full of walkie-talkies and television monitors. At the West end of the desk, across from a tiny attic window into which the sun rises, sits a soot black man. Maybe he is an old mid-60s. He looks as if some years linger still in his soul, while the ones that don’t sped off before he could catch hold. He may be blind; he may have a mild mental disability from obvious and repeated beatings. And, framed by a singular rectangle of light, sits a dark 14-year old, the only person in the room you claim to know. Hazard you are the reason he’s here. “Hi, Dwight,” you almost say, but, “Hi, Dwight” knows better than to leave your throat. Swallow it hard, and sit in the low deep chair, twin to Dwight’s. Don’t cry. “Ms. Barnes,” they say, “this is Dwight’s grandfather. He says you’ve been calling. Can you describe the problem you are having with Dwight?” You do--in and out, dazed, works some days, nothing others. Never loud, never disrespectful, rarely even speaks. Still, exhibits a negative attitude sometimes. Typical. Not important enough to discover hidden rooms, assures your tone. “Is the work too hard for him,” asks the bluesy lady. Absolutely not! Dwight is in a Scholar’s Class, and he could be doing very well. Continue to listen. Dwight couldn’t go to the Back-to-School dance, today. Your fault. Decided he wasn’t coming to school at all. All his friends told him stay home. School calls Dwight’s house. Dwight answers! Don’t care. Friends all at school; Dwight is the only one at home. Dwight--the only one in trouble. This is the refrain. Dwight blocks it out like the jingle for a useless product. In 3-part harmony, variations on the same answers, over, over, and over. Dwight wants to pretend he’s a gangster. He’s out here getting into gangster trouble. You nod like you understand. You don’t. You will. Dwight’s grandfather blinks. Perhaps the old man is blinded now by the lengthening rectangle of sun crawl up your shoulder. The school bell beeps first period to an end. Dwight needs focus, they conclude for Dwight’s grandfather, for you. Dare move. “How much do you think Dwight’s coat cost?” It’s a blue, leather, Avirex jacket, and must weigh as much as one of the seventh graders. You are confused as to why you are obligated to answer. “I don’t know.” “350 dollar coat.” Still looking at Dwight’s grandfather. Just as stupid; just as unsuspecting. It’s not Dwight’s coat. A child has pledged to kill the owner of this coat, a high school boy. The heavy white cop emerges from the panopticon, shoves a pad of paper through the rectangle of morning light into the black boy’s face. “What’s this, Dwight? Officer Powell picked you up, said you was claiming 6 deuce. You 6 deuce, Dwight?” Shakes his head no. “Are you, Dwight?” Shrugs. “Are you, Dwight?” Shakes his head and shrugs. “Is this what you see from Dwight, Ms. Barnes?” This from the Olmec. Every interaction you think; you nod slowly. “You told Officer Powell you was claiming 6 Deuce. We got you down claiming 6 deuce whether you are or aren’t Dwight.” “Do you know about this?” The blues woman. You shake your head. The grandfather’s eyes aim for Dwight, almost. “Are you 6 deuce, Dwight? You hang around Tariq?” Suck teeth. “Clifford” Mmmm. Suck teeth. “George.” Suck teeth. Mmmm. Sigh. “Julius.” “Keith.” A chorus like those desperate prayers that compel every sinner in church to cry out. “Two or three of them are 6 deuce. Is that what you are Dwight? Is that what you want to be? That’s where you’re headed.” Dwight looks down at his hands. You look at Dwight. The gorgon look at you, pitying. Dwight’s grandpa stares blind. “See, Ms.Barnes...” At the sound of this name you wonder, why is this Ms. Barnes? Haven’t heard Dwight’s grandfather’s name twice. Meanwhile, it is becoming crystal clear to you that you are the only one who has been calling home about Dwight. Everybody else knew or assumed. “…Dwight cannot concentrate because one of his friends, another wannabe, opened his mouth to some real gangsters…” Real means 8th graders choosing a set like other kids pick high schools. Gangsters means child soldiers. The civilest war. The white woman, book-ended by the brown women, selects impressive words—“so- called,” “loaned” and “friend” to explain how Dwight got the jacket. Euthanasia, infanticide, genocide, how Dwight got the jacket. “Some friend,” you think; she says. “So Dwight isn’t focusing on his Back and Forth sheets, --or any of that plaintive, journal writing shit you had him doing. Ha!-- “…Dwight is worried about his walk to school, his walk home, someone coming up in the school for him.” 14 years old, someone is coming to kill Dwight. The bad boy huddles in the chair next to you. His grandfather, his guardian, stares at the inside of his own pupils. All of this over some jacket to go in music videos, not brokedy ass school lockers. And still you sit, and still you continue to listen, because finally, the sister furthest from the grandpa asks him, not you, “what are you doing?” As Dwight’s grandfather stutters to a start, you realize that in the dozens of times you have called Dwight’s house over the past month or two, you have never spoken to this man. Some woman speaks on the answering machine. Never heard his voice. A jumble of words fall from the old man’s lips like a kitten on piano keys. Mush and illogic. You now understand why Dwight so seldom speaks. Wonder how he even learned to speak English. As if picking through a patois of your own first tongue, you identify words referring to an aunt, her not living with them, the grandfather leaving earlier than Dwight leaves for school, couldn’t do nothing about it. The bell pushes 2nd or 3rd hour students into your classroom. You don’t worry who’s with them. These people have had this conversation before, clearly, because the Olmec woman interrupts, “Dwight should still be in contact with his aunt.” Where the hell was her telephone number, you think. Why doesn’t Dwight live with her? “His aunt is in regular contact with us, and Dwight’s J.D.O.” Dwight has a J.D. O. Where was the J.D.O.’s number? Carefully, Dwight has kept all of this from his aunt. The blues woman threatens to tell. Before she can sing the period, Dwight begins to cry. “What about calling in the morning when you get to work?” The coach asks the grandfather-- apparently a strategy that the group had already worked out. More nothing: “fifty cents,” “add up,” “stopped.” “I…” you start but cannot finish. The chorus takes up. “See, Dwight, while you saying all these things about Ms. Barnes, Ms. Barnes believes in you. You steady calling her a this and a that, all out of her name, she is calling your house because she wants to help you. She knows that you can do better.” “Dwight should have an A in my class.” Even as you spoke, your distance from Dwight’s blinking grandpa shrinks. A grade. What reason to all of this? Colors, clothes. You just want order, to restore order. You cannot accept that the power to restore order belongs to the 14-year old black boy next to you. “But we don’t want anything to happen to Dwight. We know you don’t, Ms. Barnes. We know Dwight’s grandfather doesn’t. We know that Dwight doesn’t want to die. We know that Dwight is not ready to die. And Dwight,” they assure you, cool as marble, “will try harder in your class.” There is a long pause; you ask if you may leave. Except for Dwight, everyone thanks you. He sways in your direction, maybe afraid for you to go. You walk slowly down the narrow steps that hide behind the door you never noticed, back into the in-school detention room. Jason and the rest of the little monsters are off to lunch. Empty, the room looks more like a one-room school house. Maybe a teacher lived in the attic space where Dwight cries in front of his grandfather’s useless eyes. Who, at 10:15, could return dry eyed to the main school building where, under the appointed eye of a neighbor teacher, sadder stories connive to continue this terrible hazing? |
| Shawnna and Cortez (for PG-13) Underneath quiet Cortez, my skin is a still puddle; rainbows tickle my oily edges. Cortez dives in. listen/silent Underneath quiet Cortez, who silently manipulates my heartbeat, waves of fear rise fall like Six Flags. listen/silent Underneath quiet Cortez, unknowable to even me, I am treasure for his delicate curiosity. June 11, 2003 |
| For permission to reuse copyrighted content from Everything Outlaws Are Made Of, please go to www.copyright.com, or contact Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, telephone 978-750-8400, fax 978-646-8600. Copyright Clearance Center is a not-for-profit organization that provides copyright licensing on behalf of Jewel Sophia Younge. |
| Bee like Frankie Beverly and Maze Hit the swing set-- no arms, just kicks, then flatten your body against the chains and try to climb the sky. Then, then be a pendulum marking time, fall forward, fall back, parallel to the stars, the Arch, the dirt, the Arch, the stars. Surge into the atmosphere; catapult through the stratosphere. Chase mind racing comets to the skyline. July 3, 2003 |
| Alan, of ZineWorld writes, about PG-13: Some passages are stop and reread it twice original, and beautiful...buy the 'Greatest Hits' release. (www.at3619.com) |