BETWEEN LINES
RASHAD WRIGHT
It is Friday night during drill weekend. I’m cradling seven pounds of ammunition against my chest. The hollow point rounds attempt to scrape through my uniform. My hands are covered in carbon, they’re black on both sides, a makeshift symmetry of darkness. Sometimes I sympathize with this darkness, and how it seems so much more natural than the rapid-fire bursts of light from a gun barrel. There is a buttstock stabbing into my shoulder. My finger is strangling an innocent trigger. A belt of bullets is wearing thinner with each round fired by my M240B.
The targets are up. There is a warm living body lying on top of me, his name is Jade. He shouts “enemy, twenty five meters, twelve o’clock.” We’ve been trained to do so, we call it the three d’s: distance, direction, description. This is a premeditated response. There isn’t any visible enemy, not for me: the night observation device over my left eye was never operational. This was a pointless exercise, we were just blind men with guns.
We, National Guardsmen, are called part-time soldiers. Drill is that “part-time." Drill is that one time of the month when we fulfill our duties, when we serve our time. There’s never any combat, never any enemies to shoot at or to fight, and yet we still shoot. We still fight.
We are both soldier and civilian at the same time. On this day June 26th, 2015, somewhere in Fort Dix, on some range, lying in sand, I was a civilian in a soldier’s clothing. Caught laughing and crying at the same time. It looked like sweat and sounded like a battle cry. It was a cry.
Earlier that month in Charleston, South Carolina; nine civilians died in a place of worship. Some false god said “let there be light” as if there was a miracle to be found in a muzzle flash. That false god was Dylann Roof. This devil made a shooting range out of a church
I told myself it wasn’t Birmingham, Alabama, this wasn’t a church bombing. It wasn’t a training exercise Fort Benning, not some drill gone wrong in basic training. I tried to tell myself that this was not like the Newark riots, when part-time soldiers thought they were false gods and fired on black full-time civilians. These facts I told myself tasted like lies and were much harder to swallow than any truth.
I am both black and camouflage at the same time. Being black is a full-time job
After all the bullets are fired, the empty round casings are collected, and all of our equipment is accounted for, there is a company sized formation. A little over one hundred armed soldiers, men from the coldest parts of a free world, amassed and stood at attention, still and silent. Our First Sergeant briefs us on tomorrow’s agenda, I only heard “o’four-hundred wake up," that was all that mattered.
The First Sergeant leaves, the platoon sergeants takes charge, gives us more orders I’m too tired decipher, too blind to interpret.
My Squad leader takes charge. He doesn’t give orders. He’s knows just how dead we are. He often stumbles in the dark. He doesn’t sleep out in the woods with his squad but I always see him walk off, a bottled fireball in hand.
Amongst the chatter of squads and teams talking to their soldiers: one man proclaims, above everyone else, “no justice no peace, no racist police.” Everyone laughs, protesters are common targets for humor. This man is a corrections officer, Seargent Bonzo. He would often share stories of the fights he witnessed in the jail that employed him. He always made it a point to mention the skin color of the inmates. I was his standard for black, he’d often remark that the inmates were darker than me.
It is during these conversations that I believe in reincarnation. It makes all these dreams of dead niggas in chains that much easier to digest. Because on June 26th 2015, I finally had a dream to swallow that didn’t taste like vodka.
The dream said “yes we can." Somewhere, the president of our country must’ve been caught laughing and crying at the same time. On this day, June 26th, 2015 President Barack Obama delivers a eulogy for the victims of Dylann Roof. The same day the Supreme Court agreed that same-sex marriage didn’t deserve a muzzle-flash of a response, agreed that this light wasn’t artificial. It’d be another year or so before I’d realize that my light isn’t artificial. But on this day, I will respond to this half victory with a brief laugh, bordering on a chuckle. I can’t let too much of my civilian show, not here, on this Friday, during drill, in this darkness.
On the Dylann Roof side of a gun, no one will ask, what I am not willing to tell. That is a soldier’s blessing, the ability to blend in as if never even being seen. Most people are forced to hide their skeletons under a bed or in their closets. I don’t have to do that. As a soldier, I can hide my skeletons in plain sight. That’s me, I am just another skeleton that forgot it was hiding.
A year later, June 2016, I’d be reminded why I was always so good at hiding. Omar
Mateen would make skeletons out of so many people that looked just like me. At some gay nightclub in Florida, one man would turn a sanctuary into a coffin. I wonder if the record skipped as the bodies drop to the beat. A bunch of gunshots and screams would forever remix Diana Ross’s greatest hits, force the lyrics to hide in the back of my mouth.
I didn’t always think of life as hiding. It was never that black and white for me. I was never really colorblind, I always knew something was beautiful when I saw it whether it be black or of the same-sex or both at the same time.
My Sargent always seemed to be on the Omar Mateen side of his rifle. I always had to keep parts of myself underneath the camouflage. I never wanted to find myself on the wrong side of a “misfire.” Too many soldiers have misfires, unknown bullets discharging from their lips. They’re just walking rifles shooting off slurs like “faggot” or “bitch.” Sometimes I think they’re aiming at me.
There was a guy at basic training with his aim on me and I liked it. One time we crossed hairs in a bathroom stall. He won’t admit it, most times I won’t either. Certain secrets are better off left in the nights that birth them. Sometimes I’m one of those secrets. At drill, they’ll talk about the women they’ve been with, so will I but not even a whisper of the men.
I was always on so many sides at the same time. I guess that’s what it means to be a skeleton, to be an amalgamation of parts. To be on both sides of the frontlines. As a poet. As a soldier. I will never not be behind enemy lines.
During the National Poetry Slam of August 2015, I perform a poem titled “Plastic Morals”, in this poem I transform from poet to soldier before the crowd’s eyes. In an adjacent memory of 2015, my sergeant tells me the New Jersey National Guard might be deployed to assist in the Baltimore Riots, my poet cries, my soldier laughs. In May 2016, I perform a poem in Baltimore, Maryland and receive a standing ovation, my poet laughs. My ex is in the crowd, he was on the Baltimore team. I broke up with him on New Year’s Eve of 2015. I couldn’t enter 2016 with another secret.
As a poet, it feels like the souls of black folks fire through my lips. But today I have to seal my middle passage of a throat. The gunfire drowns out their voices, I drown myself in the empty round casings as if to replace one form of suffocation with another. No one will see me submerged in a pool of bullets. There is no fellowship here. Us “weekend warriors” are just a bunch of “have nots” and half-truths.
I wonder if this is what Amiri Baraka experienced when he was in the Airforce. There goes another dead man’s name in my mouth. Is that what it means to be a poet, to have my body serve as a burial ground for lives not yet buried. As a skeleton, on most days, I feel like a life not yet buried.
Some Friday in 2020, I won’t be a half-soldier or half-civilian. I’ll be a pile of parts given flesh, colorful flesh. There won’t be a belt of bullets to shoot, some unseen enemy to fight or a matrimony of sweat and tears. On this foreign Friday, you can ask all of your questions and I will tell you all of my truths. Because after I do my last salute, I won’t be two different things “at the same time.”
The targets are up. There is a warm living body lying on top of me, his name is Jade. He shouts “enemy, twenty five meters, twelve o’clock.” We’ve been trained to do so, we call it the three d’s: distance, direction, description. This is a premeditated response. There isn’t any visible enemy, not for me: the night observation device over my left eye was never operational. This was a pointless exercise, we were just blind men with guns.
We, National Guardsmen, are called part-time soldiers. Drill is that “part-time." Drill is that one time of the month when we fulfill our duties, when we serve our time. There’s never any combat, never any enemies to shoot at or to fight, and yet we still shoot. We still fight.
We are both soldier and civilian at the same time. On this day June 26th, 2015, somewhere in Fort Dix, on some range, lying in sand, I was a civilian in a soldier’s clothing. Caught laughing and crying at the same time. It looked like sweat and sounded like a battle cry. It was a cry.
Earlier that month in Charleston, South Carolina; nine civilians died in a place of worship. Some false god said “let there be light” as if there was a miracle to be found in a muzzle flash. That false god was Dylann Roof. This devil made a shooting range out of a church
I told myself it wasn’t Birmingham, Alabama, this wasn’t a church bombing. It wasn’t a training exercise Fort Benning, not some drill gone wrong in basic training. I tried to tell myself that this was not like the Newark riots, when part-time soldiers thought they were false gods and fired on black full-time civilians. These facts I told myself tasted like lies and were much harder to swallow than any truth.
I am both black and camouflage at the same time. Being black is a full-time job
After all the bullets are fired, the empty round casings are collected, and all of our equipment is accounted for, there is a company sized formation. A little over one hundred armed soldiers, men from the coldest parts of a free world, amassed and stood at attention, still and silent. Our First Sergeant briefs us on tomorrow’s agenda, I only heard “o’four-hundred wake up," that was all that mattered.
The First Sergeant leaves, the platoon sergeants takes charge, gives us more orders I’m too tired decipher, too blind to interpret.
My Squad leader takes charge. He doesn’t give orders. He’s knows just how dead we are. He often stumbles in the dark. He doesn’t sleep out in the woods with his squad but I always see him walk off, a bottled fireball in hand.
Amongst the chatter of squads and teams talking to their soldiers: one man proclaims, above everyone else, “no justice no peace, no racist police.” Everyone laughs, protesters are common targets for humor. This man is a corrections officer, Seargent Bonzo. He would often share stories of the fights he witnessed in the jail that employed him. He always made it a point to mention the skin color of the inmates. I was his standard for black, he’d often remark that the inmates were darker than me.
It is during these conversations that I believe in reincarnation. It makes all these dreams of dead niggas in chains that much easier to digest. Because on June 26th 2015, I finally had a dream to swallow that didn’t taste like vodka.
The dream said “yes we can." Somewhere, the president of our country must’ve been caught laughing and crying at the same time. On this day, June 26th, 2015 President Barack Obama delivers a eulogy for the victims of Dylann Roof. The same day the Supreme Court agreed that same-sex marriage didn’t deserve a muzzle-flash of a response, agreed that this light wasn’t artificial. It’d be another year or so before I’d realize that my light isn’t artificial. But on this day, I will respond to this half victory with a brief laugh, bordering on a chuckle. I can’t let too much of my civilian show, not here, on this Friday, during drill, in this darkness.
On the Dylann Roof side of a gun, no one will ask, what I am not willing to tell. That is a soldier’s blessing, the ability to blend in as if never even being seen. Most people are forced to hide their skeletons under a bed or in their closets. I don’t have to do that. As a soldier, I can hide my skeletons in plain sight. That’s me, I am just another skeleton that forgot it was hiding.
A year later, June 2016, I’d be reminded why I was always so good at hiding. Omar
Mateen would make skeletons out of so many people that looked just like me. At some gay nightclub in Florida, one man would turn a sanctuary into a coffin. I wonder if the record skipped as the bodies drop to the beat. A bunch of gunshots and screams would forever remix Diana Ross’s greatest hits, force the lyrics to hide in the back of my mouth.
I didn’t always think of life as hiding. It was never that black and white for me. I was never really colorblind, I always knew something was beautiful when I saw it whether it be black or of the same-sex or both at the same time.
My Sargent always seemed to be on the Omar Mateen side of his rifle. I always had to keep parts of myself underneath the camouflage. I never wanted to find myself on the wrong side of a “misfire.” Too many soldiers have misfires, unknown bullets discharging from their lips. They’re just walking rifles shooting off slurs like “faggot” or “bitch.” Sometimes I think they’re aiming at me.
There was a guy at basic training with his aim on me and I liked it. One time we crossed hairs in a bathroom stall. He won’t admit it, most times I won’t either. Certain secrets are better off left in the nights that birth them. Sometimes I’m one of those secrets. At drill, they’ll talk about the women they’ve been with, so will I but not even a whisper of the men.
I was always on so many sides at the same time. I guess that’s what it means to be a skeleton, to be an amalgamation of parts. To be on both sides of the frontlines. As a poet. As a soldier. I will never not be behind enemy lines.
During the National Poetry Slam of August 2015, I perform a poem titled “Plastic Morals”, in this poem I transform from poet to soldier before the crowd’s eyes. In an adjacent memory of 2015, my sergeant tells me the New Jersey National Guard might be deployed to assist in the Baltimore Riots, my poet cries, my soldier laughs. In May 2016, I perform a poem in Baltimore, Maryland and receive a standing ovation, my poet laughs. My ex is in the crowd, he was on the Baltimore team. I broke up with him on New Year’s Eve of 2015. I couldn’t enter 2016 with another secret.
As a poet, it feels like the souls of black folks fire through my lips. But today I have to seal my middle passage of a throat. The gunfire drowns out their voices, I drown myself in the empty round casings as if to replace one form of suffocation with another. No one will see me submerged in a pool of bullets. There is no fellowship here. Us “weekend warriors” are just a bunch of “have nots” and half-truths.
I wonder if this is what Amiri Baraka experienced when he was in the Airforce. There goes another dead man’s name in my mouth. Is that what it means to be a poet, to have my body serve as a burial ground for lives not yet buried. As a skeleton, on most days, I feel like a life not yet buried.
Some Friday in 2020, I won’t be a half-soldier or half-civilian. I’ll be a pile of parts given flesh, colorful flesh. There won’t be a belt of bullets to shoot, some unseen enemy to fight or a matrimony of sweat and tears. On this foreign Friday, you can ask all of your questions and I will tell you all of my truths. Because after I do my last salute, I won’t be two different things “at the same time.”
RASHAD WRIGHT is a poet, an activist, a Jersey City native, and an integral member of his home’s artistic community. Currently studying English Creative Writing at New Jersey City University. In Spring 2015, he was named the Grandslam Champion of Jersey City Slam and competed in the National Poetry Slam in Oakland, California. Since then he has coached the 2016 Jersey City Slam team. He's also been a semifinalist at Union Square Slam and Bowery Poetry Slam.