at Length
The Visible Boy
1. The Subject
Little Brown Koko goes by Koko
in the book as I remember it
Although he is / Little and black although he is
Subject to the book
in the book as I remember it / Nobody calls him Little Brown Koko
nobody in the book
The writer calls him Little Brown
Koko and / It doesn’t seem to matter that he’s little
what / Matters is that he’s black
And even without the illustrations the
Reader would know he’s black
Because his name is Little first then Brown
although / Nobody calls him Little Brown
Koko in the book as I remember it
Although he is
subject to the book
2. The Light
Little Brown Koko wears a ragged wide-brimmed hat
A straw hat straw-
Colored and torn some
in the book as I remember it
Torn some and split the brim is split a few
In a few places
wide and always showing angled
up and showing like / A straw-
Colored medieval halo
Except the sky shows through
Blue and the red of the red barn as Little
Brown Koko walks past it
in the book as I remember it
In the book as I remember it / The red barn overflows with golden hay
Almost the color of the hat
but gilded by a light / The illustrator doesn’t draw
down to the brown boy
3. The Empty Spaces
Little Brown Koko skips along
A picket fence as tall as he is
in the book as I remember it
In the book as I remember
it the fence is brown
And I remember wondering
why it wasn’t white / Like
the white picket fences in my mind
White like I never saw a picket fence
Until I saw a white one knew I’d seen
A picket fence
Soon as I saw a white one
all the picket fences on
My street were brown
White like I saw it on vacation
white / Like I felt like
I finally knew how picket fences worked
Even the empty spaces looked
as solid as a wall
4. The Dog
Little Brown Koko walks
Barefoot in summer
in winter in spring / Little Brown Koko plays
barefoot in dirt
In the book as I remember it
In the book as I remember it a small white dog
Follows him everywhere / Little Brown Koko walks
In this adventure fast he sometimes he’s
Looks like he’s almost running
He wants to shake the dog he tells the dog
He wants a better dog the dog
won’t get shook loose
Little Brown Koko sees all kinds of better dogs
In the book as I remember it in town great
Big dogs he tells the dog
I seen how smart they is
They chase me like they know what I don’t got
5. The Athlete
Little Brown Koko / Surrounds himself
with or in the book as I remember it is surrounded by
parentheses / The illustrator
keeps him moving
black / Parentheses like as if his brown skin struck
black / Sparks on the air with every step
As if to show it comes / Off
as impossible fire
Black quarter moons orbiting Little Brown Koko’s knees
As if he were a sun and world together
The source of the black light / Reflected by the moons his every movement light
And the planet the moons are bound to
The black boy makes a solar system running and / Runs
like he knows no pictures otherwise no life
6. The Dead Come Back
Little Brown Koko rolls a watermelon
carefully along a picket fence
In the book as I remember it
In the book as I remember it
The picket fence is brown
And I remember wondering
why it wasn’t white
But here my memories
Feel loose here here the fence
might have been white
In the book as I remember it
An unseen something stalks the child
Something I felt inside me stalking me
In the book as I remember it
He stole the watermelon from an old white neighbor
He rolls it slowly
as the stone was rolled / From the mouth
of the tomb from which the lynched come back and live forever
7. The Two Blacks
Little Brown Koko’s mother bakes him cornbread
in the book as I remember it
She beats him with a wooden spoon
She chases him from the house
Waving a rolling pin above her head
In the book as I remember it
in the book as I remember it
The illustrator indicates the motion / With action lines
Parentheses surround the rolling pin
Parentheses surround
Little Brown Koko running from the house
The black of the parentheses
Is different from the black of his brown skin
The two blacks tell the reader
everything the reader needs to know about him
Like two-way mirrors
8. The Handkerchief
Little Brown Koko packs a handkerchief
In the book as I remember it to run away
He ties the handkerchief
To the end of a long straight stick
In the book as I remember it he walks
Barefoot to the train yard toward the train yard sees
Trains in the distance sees the train yard he sees trains
Little Brown Koko wants to run away / Riding
he’s running from
His mother who has beaten him
For stealing watermelons
as he walks his handkerchief his red
Handkerchief took it from his mother blackens wet
He lays the stick down
he / Opens the handkerchief
it’s packed full with
the dripping rinds
9. The Storm
Little Brown Koko sees a girl
Little black girl as black as he is
little as
In the book as I remember it he sees her from
a distance from the train yard in
Another distance
turns / From looking at thinking about the trains in the train yard sees
Her playing in her yard
Really from where as far as he is sees her
Sitting in grass / Waving her arms
it’s not until he gets himself real close he sees her / He sees
she’s playing isn’t even
Thinking of him still hasn’t seen him
He feels a feeling like he feels / Sometimes like when he gets caught stealing
when he knows
his mom- / ma’s gonna beat him that
feeling except for warm
The feeling when he knows it’s coming no
Real boundaries in the world
No closing any door could keep him safe
except for warm / And warm
Isn’t a difference he could say for sure it matters sees
She’s playing with a doll it’s dressed like she is
white / Dress and not wearing shoes
Except the doll is wearing shoes has one white shoe
And one bare foot
He speaks he says his name is Koko she
says I don’t have to talk to you / She says it like
she has been watching him the whole / Time
but she doesn’t look at him
His lips as full and round as worms
Dying surprised just after rain
10. The Thief
Little Brown Koko / Buys candy cigarettes
In the book as I remember it
With pennies he found in the road
and saved for months
Not all at once
all five pennies at once / Mostly in town / Always in town and so he walks to town
Any free day he gets it’s
A full day’s walking to
town and back home he leaves before or walks back after
The day and most days he finds nothing
What boy ever so walked so far for sweetness far to feel
Like he has outgrown sweetness
like a man inside who even his sweetness burns
Little Brown Koko steals
A watermelon sometimes walking back
even its sweetness burns
11. The Perfume
Little Brown Koko wears a wide-brimmed / Hat
in the windy country he was born to
It’s easy to find God
when something’s being taken from you
The black boy finds God everywhere
In the book as I remember it he hears
The voice of God in town in spring in the
morning in spring / Walking through town in spring
He smells a bright perfume / A white
woman’s perfume
On the breeze it is the voice of God describing / The breeze
and even as a gust carries his hat away / He feels
nothing he sees nothing his eyes
Are closed he hears the voice of God
He doesn’t see the white man coming
shouting with the voice of God
12. The Visible Boy
Little Brown Koko lives in pictures
in the book as I remember it
In illustrations always somehow too
Small for his body
the / Solid black outlines of his body no
Sure boundary for his brown black skin
His belly covered not held in
By bright red overalls / His overalls
Stop just above his knees
the pink of his pink lips
Stretches to cover the
Bigness of his big lips
In the book as I remember it
I saw him also in the words
but wrong in the words / In my mind as I read the words
His body hadn’t been
fixed beaten into shape
by an unseen hand
They Title the Postcard “Just Singing a Song”
The writer and the illustrator and
Little Brown Koko
Meet to decide over coffee what he is
Little Brown Koko takes his
black it’s brown like him
The writer and the illustrator take
theirs Diet Coke
Little Brown Koko says he is a joke
White folks make black folks
Play on themselves
The writer and the illustrator nod
Then frown
go blank
Then say
They never seen him round
These parts before boy what’s your name
Little Brown Koko says he is song
more grating every time it’s sung
Closer to silence every time it’s sung
They string him up
they stuff his severed penis in his mouth
Shane McCrae is the author of Mule, Blood, and three chapbooks–most recently, Nonfiction, which won the Black Lawrence Press Black River Chapbook Competition. His poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry, The American Poetry Review, Fence, Gulf Coast and elsewhere, and he has received a Whiting Writer’s Award and a fellowship from the NEA. He teaches in the brief-residency MFA program at Spalding University.
His poem “Brother” also appeared in At Length. You can read it here.