■
what comes after this
water earth fire air
i can scarcely remember
gushing down through my mother
onto the family bed
but the dirt of eviction
is still there
and the burning bodies of men
i have tried to love
through the southern blinds
narrow memories enter the room
i had not counted on ice
nor clay nor the uncertain hiss
of an old flame water earth fire
it is always unexpected and
i wonder what is coming
after this whether it is air
or it is nothing
■
blake
saw them glittering in the trees,
their quills erect among the leaves,
angels everywhere. we need new words
for what this is, this hunger entering our
loneliness like birds, stunning our eyes into rays
of hope. we need the flutter that can save
us, something that will swirl across the face
of what we have become and bring us grace.
back north, i sit again in my own home
dreaming of blake, searching the branches
for just one poem.
■
evening and my dead once husband
rises up from the spirit board
through trembled air i moan
the names of our wayward sons
and ask him to explain why
i fuss like a fishwife why
cancer and terrible loneliness
and the wars against our people
and the room glimmers as if washed
in tears and out of the mist a hand
becomes flesh and i watch
as its pointing fingers spell
it does not help to know
■
in the same week
for samuel sayles, jr., 1938–1993
after the third day
the fingers of your folded hands
must have melted together
into perpetual prayer.
it was hot and buffalo.
nothing innocent could stay.
in the same week
stafford folded his tongue
and was gone. nothing
innocent is safe.
the frailty of love
falls from the newspaper
onto our bedroom floor
and we walk past not noticing.
the end of something simple
is happening here,
something essential. brother,
we burned you into little shells
and stars. we hold them hard,
attend too late to each,
mourn every necessary bit.
the angels shake their heads.
too little and too late.
■
heaven
my brother is crouched at the edge
looking down.
he has gathered a circle of cloudy
friends around him
and they are watching the world.
i can feel them there, i always could.
i used to try to explain to him
the afterlife,
and he would laugh. he is laughing now,
pointing toward me. “she was my sister,”
i feel him say,
“even when she was right, she was wrong.”
■
lorena
it lay in my palm soft and trembled
as a new bird and i thought about
authority and how it always insisted
on itself, how it was master
of the man, how it measured him, never
was ignored or denied and how it promised
there would be sweetness if it was obeyed
just like the saints do, like the angels,
and i opened the window and held out my
uncupped hand. i swear to god,
i thought it could fly
■
in the meantime
Poem ending with a line from The Mahabharata,
quoted at the time of the first atomic blast.
the Lord of loaves and fishes
frowns as the children of
Haiti Somalia Bosnia Rwanda Everyhere
float onto the boats of their bellies
and die in the meantime
someone who is not hungry sits to dine
we could have become
fishers of men
we could have been
a balm
a light
we have become
not what we were
in the mean time
that split apart with the atom
all roads began to lead
to these tables
these hungry children
this time
and
I am become Death the destroyer of worlds.
■
the times
it is hard to remain human on a day
when birds perch weeping
in the trees and the squirrel eyes
do not look away but the dog ones do
in pity.
another child has killed a child
and i catch myself relieved that they are
white and i might understand except
that i am tired of understanding.
if this
alphabet could speak its own tongue
it would be all symbol surely;
the cat would hunch across the long table
and that would mean time is catching up,
and the spindle fish would run to ground
and that would mean the end is coming
and the grains of dust would gather themselves
along the streets and spell out:
these too are your children this too is your child
■
dialysis
after the cancer, the kidneys
refused to continue.
they closed their thousand eyes.
blood fountains from the blind man’s
arm and decorates the tile today.
somebody mops it up.
the woman who is over ninety
cries for her mother. if our dead
were here they would save us.
we are not supposed to hate
the dialysis unit. we are not
supposed to hate the universe.
this is not supposed to happen to me.
after the cancer the body refused
to lose any more. even the poisons
were claimed and kept
until they threatened to destroy
the heart they loved. in my dream
a house is burning.
something crawls out of the fire
cleansed and purified.
in my dream i call it light.
after the cancer i was so grateful
to be alive. i am alive and furious.
Blessed be even this?
■
libation
north carolina, 1999
i offer to this ground,
this gin.
i imagine an old man
crying here
out of the overseer’s sight,
pushing his tongue
through where a tooth
would be if he were whole.
the space aches
where his tooth would be,
where his land would be, his
house his wife his son
his beautiful daughter.
he wipes his sorrow from
his cheek, then
puts his thirsty finger
to his thirsty tongue
and licks the salt.
i call a name that
could be his.
this offering
is for you old man;
this salty ground,
this gin.
■
jasper texas 1998
for j. byrd
i am a man’s head hunched in the road.
i was chosen to speak by the members
of my body. the arm as it pulled away
pointed toward me, the hand opened once
and was gone.
why and why and why
should i call a white man brother?
who is the human in this place,
the thing that is dragged or the dragger?
what does my daughter say?
the sun is a blister overhead.
if i were alive i could not bear it.
the townsfolk sing we shall overcome
while hope bleeds slowly from my mouth
into the dirt that covers us all.
i am done with this dust. i am done.
■
alabama 9/15/63
Have you heard the one about
the shivering lives,
the never to be borne daughters and sons,
the one about Cynthia and Carole and Denise and Addie
Mae?
Have you heard the one about
the four little birds
shattered into skylarks in the white
light of Birmingham?
Have you heard how the skylarks,
known for their music,
swooped into heaven, how the sunday
morning strains shook the piano, how the blast
is still too bright to hear them play?
■
praise song
to my aunt blanche
who rolled from grass to driveway
into the street one sunday morning.
i was ten. i had never seen
a human woman hurl her basketball
of a body into the traffic of the world.
Praise to the drivers who stopped in time.
Praise to the faith with which she
