before the word
You were.
You kiss my brother mouth.
the rest is silence.
■
hometown 1993
think of it; the landscape
potted as if by war, think of
the weeds, the boarded buildings,
the slivers of window abandoned
in the streets, and behind one
glass, my little brother, dying.
think of how he must have
bounded into our mothers arms,
held hard to our fathers swollen hand,
never looking back, glad to be gone
from the contempt, the terrible night
of buffalo.
■
ones like us
enter a blurry world,
fetish tight around our
smallest finger, mezuzah
gripped in our good child hand.
we feel for our luck
but everywhere is menace menace
until we settle ourselves
against the bark of trees, against
the hide of fierce protection
and there, in the shadow,
words call us. words call us
and we go.
for wayne karlin
5/28/93
■
telling our stories
the fox came every evening to my door
asking for nothing. my fear
trapped me inside, hoping to dismiss her
but she sat till morning, waiting.
at dawn we would, each of us,
rise from our haunches, look through the glass
then walk away.
did she gather her village around her
and sing of the hairless moon face,
the trembling snout, the ignorant eyes?
child, i tell you now it was not
the animal blood i was hiding from,
it was the poet in her, the poet and
the terrible stories she could tell.
■
the coming of fox
one evening i return
to a red fox
haunched by my door.
i am afraid
although she knows
no enemy comes here.
next night again
then next then next
she sits in her safe shadow
silent as my skin bleeds
into long bright flags
of fur.
■
dear fox
it is not my habit
to squat in the hungry desert
fingering stones, begging them
to heal, not me but the dry mornings
and bitter nights.
it is not your habit
to watch. none of this
is ours, sister fox.
tell yourself that anytime now
we will rise and walk away
from somebody else’s life.
any time.
■
leaving fox
so many fuckless days and nights.
only the solitary fox
watching my window light
barks her compassion.
i move away from her eyes,
from the pitying brush
of her tail
to a new place and check
for signs. so far
i am the only animal.
i will keep the door unlocked
until something human comes.
■
a dream of foxes
in the dream of foxes
there is a field
and a procession of women
clean as good children
no hollow in the world
surrounded by dogs
no fur clumped bloody
on the ground
only a lovely line
of honest women stepping
without fear or guilt or shame
safe through the generous fields
■
amazons
when the rookery of women
warriors all
each cupping one hand around
her remaining breast
daughters of dahomey
their name fierce on the planet
when they came to ask
who knows what you might have
to sacrifice poet amazon
there is no choice
then when they each
with one nipple lifted
beckoned to me
five generations removed
i rose
and ran to the telephone
to hear
cancer early detection no
mastectomy not yet
there was nothing to say
my sisters swooped in a circle dance
audre was with them and i
had already written this poem
■
lumpectomy eve
all night i dream of lips
that nursed and nursed
and the lonely nipple
lost in loss and the need
to feed that turns at last
on itself that will kill
its body for its hunger’s sake
all night i hear the whispering
the soft
love calls you to this knife
for love for love
all night it is the one breast
comforting the other
■
1994
i was leaving my fifty-eighth year
when a thumb of ice
stamped itself hard near my heart
you have your own story
you know about the fear the tears
the scar of disbelief
you know that the saddest lies
are the ones we tell ourselves
you know how dangerous it is
to be born with breasts
you know how dangerous it is
to wear dark skin
i was leaving my fifty-eighth year
when i woke into the winter
of a cold and mortal body
thin icicles hanging off
the one mad nipple weeping
have we not been good children
did we not inherit the earth
but you must know all about this
from your own shivering life
■
hag riding
why
is what i ask myself
maybe it is the afrikan in me
still trying to get home
after all these years
but when i wake to the heat of the morning
galloping down the highway of my life
something hopeful rises in me
rises and runs me out into the road
and i lob my fierce thigh high
over the rump of the day and honey
i ride i ride
■
rust
we don’t like rust,
it reminds us that we are dying.
—Brett Singer
are you saying that iron understands
time is another name for God?
that the rain-licked pot is holy?
that the pan abandoned in the house
is holy? are you saying that they
are sanctified now, our girlhood skillets
tarnishing in the kitchen?
are you saying we only want to remember
the heft of our mothers’ handles,
their ebony patience, their shine?
■
shadows
in the latter days
you will come to a place
called memphis
there you will wait for a while
by the river mississippi
until you can feel the shadow
of another memphis and another
river. nile
wake up girl.
you dreaming.
the sign may be water or fire
or it may be the black earth
or the black blood under the earth
or it may be the syllables themselves
coded to you from your southern kin.
wake up girl.
i swear you dreaming.
memphis.
capital of the old kingdom
of ancient egypt at the apex
of the river across from
the great pyramids.
nile. born in the mountains
of the moon.
wake up girl,
this don’t connect.
wait there.
in the shadow of your room
you may see another dusky woman
weakened by too much loss.
she will be dreaming a small boat
through centuries of water
into the white new world.
she will be weaving garments
of neglect.
wake up girl.
this don’t mean nothing.
meaning is the river
of voices. meaning
is the patience of the moon.
meaning is the thread
running forever in shadow.
girl girl wake up.
somebody calling you.
■
entering the south
i have put on my mother’s coat.
it is warm and familiar
as old fur
and i can hear hushed voices
through it. too many
animals have died
to make this. the sleeves
coil down toward my hands
like rope. i will wear it
because she loved it
but the blood from it pools
on my shoulders
heavy and dark and alive.
■
the mississippi river empties into the gulf
and the gulf enters the sea and so forth,
none of them emptying anything,
all of them carrying yesterday
forever on their white tipped backs,
all of them dragging forward tomorrow.
it is the great circulation
of the earth’s body, like the blood
of the gods, this river in which the past
is always flowing. every water
is the same water coming round.
everyday someone is standing on the edge
of this river, staring into time,
whispering mistakenly:
only here. only now.
■
old man river
everything elegant
but this water
tables set with crystal
at the tea shop
miss lady patting her lips
with linen
horses pure stock
negras pure stock
everything clear
but this big muddy
water
don’t say nothin’
must know somethin’
■
auction street
for angela mcdonald
consider the drum.
consider auction street
and the beat
throbbing up through our shoes,
through the trolley
so that it rides as if propelled
by hundreds, by thousands
of fathers and mothers
led in a coffle
to the block.
consider the block,
topside smooth as skin
almost translucent like a drum
that has been beaten
for the last time
and waits now to be honored
for the music it has had to bear.
then consider brother moses,
who heard from the mountaintop:
take off your shoes,
the ground you walk is holy.
■
memphis
… at the river i stand,
guide my feet, hold my hand
i was raised
on the shore
of lake erie
e is for escape
there are more s’es
in mississippi
than my mother had
sons
this river never knew
the kingdom of dahomey
the first s
begins in slavery
and ends in y
on the bluffs
of memphis
why are you here
the river wonders
northern born
looking across from buffalo
you look into canada toronto
is the name of the lights
burning at night
the bottom of memphis
drops into the nightmare
of a little girl’s fear
in fifteen minutes
they could be here
i could be there
mississippi
not the river the state
schwerner
and chaney
and goodman
medgar
schwerner
and chaney
and goodman
and medgar
my mother had one son
he died gently near lake erie
some rivers flow back
toward the beginning
i never learned to swim
will i float or drown
in this memphis
on the mississippi river
what is this southland
what has this to do with egypt
or dahomey
or with me
so many questions
northern born
■
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
How to Carry Water Page 8