they wake you up
and make you write them down real fast even though
there’s not a voice saying Be quiet, Lonnie in your head
anymore
Just words.
Lots and lots and lots of words and
this sunny day already making itself into a poem
about your beautiful sister, Lili
skipping beside you in her yellow dress
Smiling ’cause you finally finished reading the Bible
she gave you
the Bible she thinks is the reason you two
are here now
together
You let her go on thinking that
’cause she’s just a little kid
and you’re her big brother, Locomotion
who’d do anything
to keep her smiling.
I told you. I told you, she keeps saying.
This day is already putting all kinds of words
in your head
and breaking them up into lines
and making the lines into pictures in your mind
And in the pictures the people are
laughing and frowning and
eating and reading and
playing ball and skipping along and
spinning themselves into poetry.
And I was right, Lili says, looking up at me. Wasn’t I?
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks so much to Juliet Widoff, Nancy Paulsen, Kimiko Hahn, Reiko Hahn-Hannan, and Toshi Reagon for—among other things—reading this.
And a huge shout-out of thanks to all of my friends who are poets, especially Meg Kearney, who helped me enormously with line breaks and forms and whose kind words made me believe, all over again, in the power of poetry.
Locomotion Page 6