one morning to a routine, a new
neighborhood, the assault of an alarm
clock, and less water. Is a baptism
any ocean that killed
the last you? What else can the moon
pull away from the shore?
Our fathers showed us the lakes
but never stayed
to watch us throw earth across it.
Time had smoothed them thin, too.
STILL[AIN’T]LIFE
It’s not like I cussed in the white family’s house
at their dinner table with my parents trying to be
well-mannered ghosts and twisting like fresh fall,
still felt the sun of my mother when I answered
the house’s owner, I’m never gonna cram the night
before a test again like my father’s boss was
an essay I needed to ace or—
either way my mother spent the rest of the dinner
cutting me off in case I said something bestial
again. I know my history, so I know now
that there was a job my father wanted
and a job my father didn’t get. I can
assume they were the same the way
I figure that no and nah are the same shit except
for when the locks change. My daughter reads
two grades above her own head and still
says yo to punctuate a lesson like her father,
the boy that pulled his claws out of his pockets
because he was tired of stabbing himself
in the side, and my wife tells our girl
“Ain’t” isn’t a word and I always want
to complete the downswing and say,
Ain’t isn’t a word that tried to kill my father,
it was actually “gonna” but every time
I let my clever take the wheel
I remember when my mother jabbed
me under the table for my forked
tongue and I never removed the blade
so all my language became clotted
all my boy a wound when he speaks.
THERE IS ANOTHER
me, I suppose. You may call
it another world, but it’s me
when I’m not
here. Maybe it’s the one that didn’t
get this far. He still has hair long
and unbound, he is a vessel
of feathers. He never loved
the night’s opening, took all
the chances. Maybe he never
married or married endlessly,
taking into himself over and over.
I am exhausted by him. He has
answers for all of my rooms. He never
made his way to the top
of something large without thinking
himself still large. He never refers
to the dead because they don’t die there.
He has several daughters. Not just
the one, scared sometimes, limbs
and jubilant all the time. She doesn’t
ask him things he doesn’t know.
Maybe her questions are
easier for his comfort. Maybe he’s
made every question a hymnal
she can hum back to him. Or maybe
he lies, and only I can tell the difference.
FIRST, WE DIG
The first thing we did when we moved into
the house was pull up the huge bush in front
of the patio. I wanted to buy a PlayStation,
but my wife wanted to remove the cobwebs first
before any new spiders would nest in our home.
I had never done this before, never removed life
that had been somewhere before me.
The bush’s roots were deeper than I imagined and I
asked my wife how necessary this was; my father
said that’s a good bush you probably want to keep it
and her father said why would you want to get rid
of it, what is it with you and ripping things
away from their homes? My wife has heard this
before. Heard men issue rattles to things
they can’t seem to let go of. She knows what
she wants to grow and what customs take on
fire. We went to work and cut deeper and deeper
into the earth until the bush was free and there
was a hole large enough to swallow light.
The branches and leaves caught me on their way
out. My legs and arms and fingers until I
was pulp, nicked and folded
up on the front lawn. Tangled mess
at my feet. She says, Now how hard
was that? I know this isn’t really a question
because of course it was hard, I have the markings
to prove it. I search her face for absolution
but she hasn’t heard my voice for some time now.
TO THE GARDEN I ABANDONED
Believe me when I say I had the best of intentions
in the backyard with tomatoes and peppers
and other crops that resemble organs—I admit
it is a shiny thought among the tract housing
to plant something found and not of me, nurture
with care and water and light, rake over the body
then devour it. I don’t visit my family enough
beyond the city beyond the silks of my house. I
mean to say the first weeks you looked
like a promise and my daughter enjoyed asking
when you would fully arrive, what the budding
flowers on your face meant, and I said something
corny like Those are its eyes peeking out
at the world before you gave us the rest of you,
and judging by the month’s end you must have
decided we weren’t worthy, we had too much gray
in our hair and our eyes were always watering.
I get it, truly. I often wake up staring at the ceiling,
knowing the day isn’t worth my rising, knowing
I’m past my best years—my best bloom still sits
in the belly of an other who probably forgot
my name. I can’t tell the difference between
a tomato and a pepper before they have matured.
It was a mercy when I finally pulled you out,
my arms deep in your bones until every remnant
of you was ready for the waste and you sat
on the curb until someone hauled you off,
and out of my ambition, I’m saying all that remains
are the weeds I can’t seem to get rid of. I have
to assume that is on purpose. I hope that
once someone rips everything useful out of me,
I will still haunt them.
CLIMBING DOWN, I FORGOT WHAT I WAS LOOKING FOR
There are three churches within a mile of our home,
a river that carries the word in every direction.
We attend none of these. I still want a prayer
that only exists between my hands.
A god who wants nothing of me,
head angled to the left
like my father’s and declares what is good enough.
Eventually I evaporate on his tongue. I love
a pious house adorned with someone’s lord,
someone at their feet or them at someone’s feet
or a romantic bloodletting, just not my home,
I suppose, where my knees suffer enough,
my palms pulled toward any light that will have me.
AFTER
During the second hour, with the sun still
stuck in the sky, my father and I hold the cross-
bar of our swing set above us as he tightens
a screw. Then, our arms still extended above
us, he hands the tool to me and I try to make
my
side mirror his. We have done this for decades,
the span of me. The swing set began as a lot
of pieces, which he equates with quality, compared
to something already built that can unfold
and crumble on a whim. I once was many
pieces. My father became sharper
with a wrench or switch. He says they don’t
build things to stay anymore and I know he is
apologizing for how he left our home, built one
without us. Once my side is tightened, we let go
of the swing set to stand on its own, a bar above
our heads, steady as a firm hand. He reaches out
for the tool, and I know I should call more
often, that I have built a house between
us and filled it with years. We begin to hang
the swings, the plastic horse, the slide, green
and wavy extending its new song into the grass.
He comments on how I’ve taken care of the yard
and he understands I won’t let him die alone.
ACRES
My father’s goal is to die
before his children.
It is the only way inheritance
works really. I visit him
on the acres that he is holding
for me. Flowers,
rusted tractor, a firepit
where things went and never emerged.
*
My father left us for the trees—
they do sing beautifully
when the wind
picks up. I understand
I understand. It must be impossible
to not hear voices out here. It must be
music and mosquito, a truncated existence. They
know how to find you.
*
My father bought this land
planning to move
with my mother out here. When the house
was finished, the divorce
was final. Can you haunt
a home you never laid your bones in?
Do ghosts choose their captivity?
*
My father accumulates everything
on this land
except people. Tools, minivans, trees felled
from thunderstorms, one and a half
greenhouses, an old
camper (also wrecked by the trees), a weight bench,
lanterns everywhere. I have never
stayed
the night out here. I have no idea
how dark it gets.
*
My father wants to be alive
to see me settle my family out here.
We both know
this will probably never happen.
Not in the way
he wishes, with all
of his faculties and wits. With my daughter
running through the open
world he created. She is already older
than the art of her he wants to hang.
We are all aging out
of someone else’s dream.
*
My father’s land is dense field
and his own voice.
Were he to mutter a prayer for us
a curse for me, only the land would know.
Each visit he reminds me
what is mine. What I already own. What he would never
want me to give away.
*
My father talks about how his country
is becoming less his country. I notice
the shopping
malls are getting closer and closer
to the land. He cocks
his head to one side, stares at me
with my eyes
smiles at me with a grin I have yet
to master. He wants to believe this
makes the land more livable for his asphalt son. We both
know it just makes his land
more valuable. We take the heat in
for longer than we need it. I’m just visiting. It is still
his land until it suddenly isn’t.
On the ride back I decide we will lay him
to rest before
his granddaughter probably sells it.
LORE
You laugh like everything
is not burning. Make me pinky swear
to sleep better. You say, It’s ok, Daddy
when I have believed myself
invisible. Waste not your powers,
love. I don’t say this. I say less every day;
I stare mostly. Be nice and say I observe
to the point of obsession. Everyone
has a science, but yours is a spell. Yes, also
because it’s mine too. Your mother
is weaving a forgotten lore. I forget
she is a dream I once wandered through too.
You do the cartwheel when it’s gymnastics season.
Until it is all you can do in the living room,
garage, backyard, half-dry from
the bath. You have your obsessions too.
Like a candy your grandmother sneaks
to you begging to be pulled
apart. All love has a clumsy wrapper, love. All love is
sticky to the touch.
What I want to say is that I write about dying
less than I used to. There is less room
for its ballad, the wailing, the persuasion.
What I want to say is that I have died so
many times. I have emptied
because I didn’t trust
what tried to fill me. I have left
so many behind I feel them like a parachute.
The wind is always angry or maybe I am the wind
or I am always. I wish for much
and expect less. I still think about dying.
Now it is a guest that has gotten
too comfortable in my home. Ours. I guess I could say
it was once my father, but now my father
is just my father. The night is still a starless void,
until you can see them, the stars, winking
like a secret, the great-great relative
someone older is always talking about
and I realize this is how
things don’t die. They are loved on by those
too young to believe in death’s
argument. Thank you for allowing me to not die yet.
Even though I have asked so nicely.
What happens when black bodies are still full of life and ambition? When they refuse to be moved? I have planted a stake in a neighborhood and a future and have decided that nothing will move me so easily. My father, who was born after the dawn of the civil rights era, is still here. I, the boy who can chart the violence against him through the neighborhoods he has lived, am still here. When my father is gone, and when I go, there is another—my daughter—who may have to fight in similar ways. She may have to rebel in similar ways. But she will do it, from her own plot, a governance unto herself.
We aren’t going anywhere.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Versions of the poems in this manuscript have appeared in The Journal, BOAAT, Columbia Review, Bennington Review, Waxwing, Little Patuxent Review, Adroit Journal, Rattle, and other publications.
This book is dedicated to my parents, who endured much and were rewarded little for giving me every opportunity possible. I lived a thousand lives in the years I was under their direct care so that I could live a singularly great one afterward. There is no repayment for that, outside of promising to do that for my own family.
To my wife, who has endured every whimsical idea, every reading that took me away, every evening I spen
t locked away in silence to craft these poems. I hope to have earned your never-ending patience.
To the writers I am constantly inspired by: to Barbara Fant & Nicole Homer, to Dionne Edwards & Ruth Awad, to Hanif Abdurraqib & Hieu Nguyen, to Franny Choi & Nate Marshall. To countless others who have often been there for guidance or just been there to inspire by continuing to do the work.
To the writers of Columbus, who are relentlessly outstanding and make me even more proud to share a space with.
To Katherine Latshaw, who believed in this book even before I did. To Natasha Simons, who believed in the book enough to give it the best possible home.
To the spaces that created space for me, to the Callaloo Retreat, where these poems began to form, and the Watering Hole, where some of these poems took their first breath.
To those who have supported me, invested in the work, and never let me settle, you are what makes me and this book possible.
Thank you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
© ERICA HARDESTY
WILLIAM EVANS is an author, speaker, performer, and instructor known for founding the Writing Wrongs Poetry Slam and cofounding the popular website Black Nerd Problems. He has been a national finalist in multiple poetry slam competitions and was the recipient of both a 2016 Sustainable Arts Foundation Award and a 2018 Spirit of Columbus Award. The Collaloo and Watering Hole fellow is the author of three poetry collections and currently lives with his family in Columbus, Ohio. He is an MFA candidate at Randolph College in Lynchburg, Virginia.
SimonandSchuster.com
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We Inherit What the Fires Left Page 6