Mercy

ancient, buried alive and perfectly preserved, some bones

between the mountain and the level ground, pressed flat on the

cement under the dark, the great, still, thick, heavy dark. Y ou

could sing pain soft or you could holler; you could use the

voices o f the dead i f you had to, the other skeletons pressed in

the cement. Y ou could write the words on the cement blind in

the dark, pushed on your knees, a finger dipped in blood; or

pushed flat, the dark on you, the cement under you, N in o ’s

knife touching the edge o f your skin. The poems said: Andrea,

me too, I’m on m y knees, afraid and alone, and I sing; I’m

pushed flat, rammed, torn up, and I sing; I weep, I rage, I sing; I

hurt, I’m sad, I sing; I want, I’m lost, I sing. Y ou learned the

names o f things, the true names, short, abrupt, unkind, and

you learned to sing them, your heart soared from them, the

song o f them, the great, simple music o f them. The dark

stayed dark and hard but now it had a sound in it, a bittersweet

lyric, music carried on the edge o f a broken line. Then m y

m omma found the words I wrote and called me awful names,

foul names, in a screaming voice, in filthy hate, she screamed I

was dirty, she screamed she wanted me o ff the face o f the

earth, she screamed she’d lock me up. I left on the bus to N ew

Y ork . N o one’s locking me up. When the men said the names

they whispered and touched you; and flat on the cement, still

there were no locks, no walls. When the men said the names

they were all tangled in you and their skin was melting into

you the w ay night covers everything, they curved and curled.

There was the edge o f N in o’s knife on your skin, down your

back, with him in you and the cement under you, your skin

scraped away, burned o ff almost, the sweat on you turning as

cold as the edge o f his knife; try to breathe. She screamed

foul hate and spit obscene words and tore up all your things, all

your poems you had bought and the words you had written;

and she said she’d lock you up; no one locks me up. Men

whispered the same names she said and touched you all over,

they were on you, they covered you, they hid you, they were

the weight o f midnight on you, a hundred years o f midnight,

they held you down and kept you still and it was the only

stillness you had and you could hear a heartbeat; men

whispered names and touched you all over. Men wanted you

all the time and never had enough o f you and the cement was a

great, gray plain stretching out forever and you could wander

on it forever, free, with signs that they had been there and

promises they would come back, abrasions, burns, thin,

exquisite cuts; not locked up. Under them, covered, buried,

pinned still— the dark ramming into you— you could hear a

heartbeat. And somewhere there were ones who could sing.