Black Existentialism No. 12: Da’ Bad Nigga Blues*

 

always I wuz a nigga. bad at it. I wuz always bein’ a nigga even when I wuzn’t. I wuz a nigga, somebody’s I wuz always bad at bein’ even when I wuz a nigga I wuzn’t. I wuz. bad at bein’ a nigga tho’ I wuzn’t. I wuz bad at bein’ a nigga even tho’  I wuz a real nigga, or a bad nigga, or a bitch nigga, or a fag nigga (which I always wuz). always been bad, always a nigga. tho’ I wuz bad at it I wuz bad. Nigga, I wuz always a bad nigga. I wuz a bad-bad nigga. kept me a hot nigga, always nigga, always a nigga, it’s always a nigga, always a nigga bad at it and always I wuz a nigga and always I wuz bad and bad and bad at it. Really, I’m a real nigga. cuz all my niggas say I’m a “real nigga” and if you ask my niggas I bet they’ll all point at me and say “Dat’s a real nigga!!” Really tho’— I’m bad at it. I am,  really

 

*Title and conceptual arrangement inspired in part by LeeRoy “Lasses” White’s “Nigger Blues” (1912)

by Jonah Mixon-Webster

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Jonah Mixon-Webster is a text/sound poet, and teaching artist from Flint, MI. He is a current Ph.D. candidate in English Studies with an emphasis in Poetry & Paracolonial Poetics at Illinois State University where he also serves as the editorial assistant for Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora. A Callaloo Fellow, his poetry and sound art is featured or forthcoming in Spoon River Poetry Review, Oaken Transformations: Poetry & Sculpture Walk, Los Angeles Review of Books’ Radio Poemerica, and Kinfolks: a journal of black expression.