James Brown, Santa Claus, and the Realities of Black Life

Poet, playwright and professor Cornelius Eady’s poem “Neighborhood Kids Play James Brown’s Xmas LP on Their Front Porch, Dec. 24, 2006” is featured in the Winter 2015 volume of literary journal Tin House. It’s a thematically expansive work, paying tribute to James Brown (“… he sounded like the riot of our pigment,”) sketching in hard-knock truths about race and class, and layering warm details of a black neighborhood, all in the framework of a holiday poem.

Excerpt:

Mr. Hard Work is working. 

I have to leave for last minute shopping

So I never get to hear if the loud cassette 

these kids blare on their porch across the street from 

my mother-in-law’s house

Has my sister’s and my favorite James Brown song, 

“Santa Claus Go Straight to the Ghetto.”

It’s the day before he dies. 

Who’d guess

Those hot lungs, now screaming through 

cheap speakers, 

could ever 

two-time him,

Since he sounded like a key 

turning over a new Buick,

Since the bottom was tough 

as the bricks on my daddy’s 

BBQ,

And the horns 

high-heeled the air 

like a hardheaded 

skirt.

The full poem can be found here.

 

 

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