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Ode to Big Trend

By Terrance Hayes Terrance Hayes Read the Q & A

Pretty soon the Negroes were looking to get paid.

My partner, Big Trend, wiped his ox neck and said

He wasn't going to wait too much longer. You

Know that look your daddy gets before he whups you?

That's how Big Trend looked. There was a pink scar

Meddling his forehead. Most people assumed a bear

Like him couldn't read anything but a dollar,

But I'd watched him tour the used bookstore

In town and seen him napping so I knew he held more

Than power in those hands. They could tear

A Bible in two. Sometimes on the walk home I'd hear

Him reciting poems. But come Friday, he was the one

The fellas asked to speak to the boss. He'd go alone,

Usually, and left behind, we imagined the boss buckled

Into Trend's shadow because our money always followed.

Source: Poetry (March 2008).

Biography

Terrance Hayes is the author of Wind in a Box (Penguin 2006), Hip Logic (Penguin 2002) and Muscular Music (Tia Chucha Press, 1999). His book Lighthead (2010) won the National Book Award in 2010. His other honors include a Whiting Writers Award, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, a National Poetry Series award, a Pushcart Prize, two Best American Poetry selections, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. He is a Professor . . .

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