I remember all the mentoring nights with James Kuch Mangui, too: the driving lessons, tutoring, learning poetry for the GED, and all the humor of guiding him during his arrival in Louisville. It's hard to believe that 18 years ago he was shot after a car accident. I never paid attention to how to arrange burials, but had to learn fast. He was young...so much promise....so much pain to see a death like this after the lives they had as children in Sudan. And I'm thinking of Miriam, too. Any young person who knew Akol and his family.
The prompt for the day was to write "How to Be a...." but I was looking for "How to find the Right words." It's a lot, and I'm still processing. Last night, finishing of Muhammad's Cultivating Genius, I used the poem to discuss narrative, history, what gets taught in school, and why criticality remains important. Gholdy's text, once again, helped me to find meaning in the meaninglessness.
How To Find the Right Words
for Miriam Bility
~b.r.crandall
There’s the blue sky, of course,
the clouds, the sun, and
always the stories
of boys, girls, families
on the run
hoping this elsewhere
might be a somewhere
that is safe.
Before Kuch was murdered
there was laughter,
his pontification of being named lost
when he was right before us,
sitting on a front porch
with brothers, cousins —
Dinka and proud
nɛk puön dït
We are not boys,
we are men.
There was that time
he wondered, Why are you so wet,
when his car broke down
at Bowman Field
and he needed a ride home.
I went for a run, I told him,
Oh, was a lion chasing you?
(just genetics
and an attempt
to find answers
where they seldom exist).
All wounds bleed
and communities remain in need
for several days (forever)…
fender bender, anger, guns.
I had
my wheels
and prayers,
mentorship
for the madness.
What’s the tradition,
I asked at the kitchen table,
when life is lost?
This land.
Neverland.
No man’s land.
Land of the free.
We sacrifice a cow
and we pray.
So I drove them
to a cornfield in Indiana
and pointed to black & white
milk-makers gnawing on grass.
Let me know which one.
We ended up at McDonald’s.
(It is enough, they teased.
As long as you pay for all of us).
There are also the sunsets,
sunrises no matter where we live,
the way evening stars bathe their shine
in oceans and lakes during the day.
There’s Amazing Grace, too,
sung in a Church,
where voices of 200 men
from southern Sudan
lift a spirit to the sky.
There’s that.
But there are no other words.
Rest in Peace, Akol Lual,
Syracuse, New York,
1998-2022
(the absurdity continues…)