by Claudia Rankine & John Lucas
Stop-and-Frisk
Script for Situation video created in collaboration with John Lucas
I knew whatever was in front of me was happening and then the police vehicle came to a screeching halt in front of me like they were setting up a blockade. Everywhere were flashes, a siren sounding and a stretched-out roar. Get on the ground now. Then I just knew.
And you are not the guy and still you fit the description because there is only one guy who is always the guy fitting the description.
* * *
I left my client’s house knowing I would be pulled over. I knew. I just knew. I opened my briefcase on the passenger seat, just so they could see. Yes officer rolled around on my tongue, which grew out of a bell that can never ring because its emergency was a tolling I was meant to swallow.
In a landscape that was once an ocean bed, you can’t drive yourself sane–so angry you are crying. You can’t drive yourself sane. This motion wears a guy out. Our motion is wearing you out and still you are not that guy.
* * *
Then flashes, a siren, a stretched-out roar–and you are not the guy and still you fit the description because there is only one guy who is always the guy fitting the description.
Get on the ground. Get on the ground now. I must have been speeding. No, you weren’t speeding. I wasn’t speeding? You didn’t do anything wrong. Then why are you pulling me over? Why am I pulled over? Put your hands where they can be seen. Put your hands in the air. Put your hands up.
Then you are stretched out on the hood. Then cuffed. Get on the ground now.
* * *
Each time it begins in the same way, it doesn’t begin the same way, each time it begins it’s the same. Flashes, a siren, the stretched-out roar–
Maybe because home was a hood the officer could not afford, not that a reason was needed, I was pulled out of my vehicle a block from my door, handcuffed and pushed into the police vehicle’s backseat, the officer’s knee pressing into my collarbone, the officer’s warm breath vacating a face creased into the smile of its own private joke.
Each time it begins in the same way, it doesn’t begin the same way, each time it begins it’s the same.
Go ahead and hit me motherfucker fled my lips and the officer did not need to hit me, the officer did not need anything from me except the look on my face on the drive across town. You can’t drive yourself sane. You are not insane. Our motion is wearing you out. You are not the guy.
* * *
This is what it looks like. You know this is wrong. This is not what it looks like. You need to be quiet. This is wrong. You need to close your mouth now. This is what it looks like. Why are you talking if you haven’t done anything wrong?
And you are not the guy and still you fit the description because there is only one guy who is always the guy fitting the description.
* * *
In the landscape drawn from an ocean bed, you can’t drive yourself sane–so angry you can’t drive yourself sane.
The charge the officer decided on was exhibition of speed. I was told, after the fingerprinting, to stand naked. It was only then I was instructed to dress, to leave, to walk all those miles back home.
And still you are not the guy and still you fit the description because there is only one guy who is always the guy fitting the description.
Claudia Rankine is the author of five collections of poetry including Citizen: An American Lyric and Don’t Let Me Be Lonely; two plays including Provenance of Beauty: A South Bronx Travelogue; numerous video collaborations, and is the editor of several anthologies, including The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind. For her book Citizen, Rankine won both the PEN Open Book Award and the PEN Literary Award, the NAACP Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry (Citizen was the first book ever to be named a finalist in both the poetry and criticism categories); and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Citizen also holds the distinction of being the only poetry to be a New York Times bestseller in the nonfiction category. Among her numerous awards and honors, Rankine in the recipient of the Poets & Writers’ Jackson Poetry Prize and fellowships from the Lannan Foundation and the National Endowment of the Arts. She lives in California and is the Aerol Arnold Chair in the University of Southern California English Department.
John Lucas has worked as a documentary photographer and visual artist for more than twenty-five years. John’s collaborative series of video shorts entitles “Situations,” with poet Claudia Rankine, have been screened in several venues including The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, The Sundance Film Festival, and The Pulitzer Arts Foundation. In 2014 he completed his first feature length documentary film, The Cooler Bandits, which was awarded best documentary at the 2014 Harlem International Film Festival. John’s solo work has been exhibited in museums and galleries both nationally and internationally including the Brooklyn Art Museum; Cleveland Museum of Art; Redcat; Aeroplastics Contemporary, Brussels; and Fieldgate Gallery, London.