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Folk
My people were known for their voices—how
their harmony could nurse fields back from drought.
Though my people amounted to but a few bars of The
Nation’s song, theirs was the bridge looped over and
over, crossfaded until their bodies blurred. The Nation
didn’t know what to do with the bright smears of my
people. Obsessed with sound, The Nation drew blades and
began to clear cut my people’s throats—heads and bodies
left strewn like soft rubble. My people fled into the
desert’s sands, mastered the flame and art of birthing
glass, built clear, tempered cities and never returned.
The Nation gradually outgrew my people. It loomed large,
gazed upon them like children awed with ant farms—noses
pressed against impervious, transparent panes. The
Nation loved watching my people’s industry, but missed
their sound and kept tapping the glass begging them to
sing once again. My people refused, they’d come to
realize their voices were the only things that could
make their houses shatter.
Letter Home II
~via Bloomington, IN
The trees, on the flank the wind beats,
are scabbed with snow.
Tell grandmother not to worry—
I’ve met a nice girl in the library. She isn’t us,
but I’ll ask her out. Expect grandchildren
soon. People shrink in the cold. I
imagine, momma, you may be as tall as me again.
Boy Dies
Falling
~Academy Spires, Newark NJ
The truth is a line
no more follows time’s ire
than a tiny child tailing a cat
echoes a sinking star.
Between our feigned light piled in the sky
and pedestrians’ eyes bricked over
with the everyday, no one sees
stars or five-year-olds
piercing fifteen stories of weak atmosphere
before there is blacktop. Must we return
to the line—how form is trusted so.
The iron lines trilled across
high-rise panes should have held
his note :: his rigid curiosity
a shunt from boxed air to open (again
a line) he followed to brief flight.
Life will continue to fall from sky, even
the sun some day—a promised
dawn when no light above
will mean boys named Zahir—shining,
radiant, blossoming—will rebel
against gravity and plummet
upward as the beacon should.
NOTICE:
To the Addict who Robbed Us on a Landscaping Job
~University Heights, Newark NJ
You could’ve tuned to greed, tried to pull out
a lawnmower or tuck weed whackers under each arm.
That leaf blower, a cooler porridge—
shoulder straps, detachable chute.
We didn’t think twice as you zigzagged up the road,
mumbling to some muse. We turned our heads
and you were wind, just like the machine on your back.
What black comic won’t deem dope fiends too slippery,
but you trailed an aura-wake—heat streaks woven
across South Orange Avenue from University
Heights to the projects my mother rose in.
Know we could have pursued,
even bought back the power blower
(and saved ourselves) for a fix-worth
of bills. But, rightfully, you would’ve blown
if our rusty pick-up came clanking your way.
We left it to the summer’s judgment—fearing
our small boss, sour there was likely
a man brown as all of us selling you
something so sick you’d risk
stealing from we who carry axes,
stakes, and blades for a living.
Semiotics or
After Gangs Came from the West
The graphite of winter hedges
stuffed with sparrows and rustling
trash gives way to the 3 o’clock
flood of little suns escaping the globes
and algebra books which orbit them
all day. They clot on corners, claiming rival
hues of hemoglobin. They bounce-walk
and break into an origami of bone—
fold their hands into birds, fingers flapping
and preening. A red feather tags
danger, as does blue—what irrigates
their bodies so dooms them. It seems
affectionate enough at first—chatty
hands and hugs which end in thumps
on backs—but a darker exchange ensues
when one sun is red, the other blue,
when bird hands dive below waists
to emerge with fire in their beaks.
Someteen, these young suns set with their light
splattered about the bushes—
a cold ignition of color. We blot it
with stuffed bears and wind-scarred roses
until leaves migrate back to branches—
spring’s green shroud saying forgive me
you shouldn’t have to see this.
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