into a sofa pillow
when Daddy blasted Mama into the north wall
of their cluttered one-room apartment,
Donyaâs cousin gone in a drive-by. Dark window,
click, click, gone, says Donya, her tiny finger
a barrel, the thumb a hammer. I am shocked
by their lossesâand yet when I read a poem
about my own hard-eyed teenager, Jeffery asks
He is dead yet?
It cannot be comprehended,
my 18-year-old still pushing and pulling
his own breath. And those 40 faces pity me,
knowing that I will soon be as they are,
numb to our bloodied histories,
favoring the Reaper with a thumbs-up and a wink,
hearing the question and shouting me, me,
Miss Smith, I know somebody dead!
Can poetry hurt us? they ask me before
snuggling inside my words to sleep.
1 love you, Nicole says, Nicole wearing my face,
pimples peppering her nose, and she is as black
as angels are. Nicoleâs braids clipped, their ends
kissed with match flame to seal them,
and can you teach me to write a poem about my mother?
I mean, you write about your daddy and he dead,
can you teach me to remember my mama?
A teacher tells me this is the first time Nicole
has admitted that her mother is gone,
murdered by slim silver needles and a stranger
rifling through her blood, the virus pushing
her skeleton through for Nicole to see.
And now this child with rusty knees
and mismatched shoes sees poetry as her scream
and asks me for the words to build her mother again.
Replacing the voice.
Stitching on the lost flesh.
So poets,
as we pick up our pens,
as we flirt and sin and rejoice behind microphonesâ
remember Nicole.
She knows that we are here now,
and she is an empty vessel waiting to be filled.
And she is waiting.
And she
is
waiting.
And she waits.
GIVING BIRTH TO SOLDIERS
February 1, 2005âTabitha Bonillaâs husband, Army Captain Orlando A. Bonilla, 27, was killed Wednesday in a helicopter accident in Baghdad. Her father, Army Sergeant First Class Henry A. Bacon, 45, died in Iraq last February.
She will pin ponderous medals to her
housedress, dripping the repeated roses,
while she claws through boxes filled with
him and then him. The accepting of Godâs
weird wisdom takes place over forkfuls
of rubbery casseroles and the snowy vows
of newsmen who measure her worth
in cued weeping. She offers her husbandâs
hands, a shrine of their mingled smells,
a warm seat on a couch of napped corduroy.
They offer one polished bone, scrubbed
clean of war. And she babbles of links and
irony, shrugs her numb shoulders, and feels
dimly blessed as a door slams shut on both
sides of her head. Suddenly, she is her
only history. Smiling politely beneath a fierce
salute, propped upright behind the crumpled
ghosts of her men, she is the catchy logo
for a confounded country. This day is the day
she has. Tomorrow, she will touch her own
breasts, she will dismantle a gaudy altar
with her teeth. And she will ask a bemused God
for guidance as she steps back into line,
her womb tingling vaguely with the next soldier.
IT HAD THE BEAT INEVITABLE
Itâs all right what Bobby Womack taught us, what Chaka growled,
O.K. to flaunt the hard stone double dutch planted in our calves.
Forgive Smokey for sending us off to search for that white horse
and the half-white boy riding it. Go on, shove that peppermint stick
down the center of that sour pickle, dine on a sandwich of Wonder
and souse, take your stand in that black woman assembly line to
scrape the scream from chitlins. Itâs all right that Mama caught the
âhound up from Alabama, that Daddy rode up from Arkansas and
youâre the only souvenir they got. We brown girls, first generation
brick, sparkling in Dacron and pink sweat socks, we went the only
way we could. Our weather vane, whirling in Chicago wind, was the
rusted iron torso of a stout black woman. We vanished for a while.
Gwen Brooks hissed Follow. We had no choice.
MISSISSIPPIâS LEGS
for
when Daddy blasted Mama into the north wall
of their cluttered one-room apartment,
Donyaâs cousin gone in a drive-by. Dark window,
click, click, gone, says Donya, her tiny finger
a barrel, the thumb a hammer. I am shocked
by their lossesâand yet when I read a poem
about my own hard-eyed teenager, Jeffery asks
He is dead yet?
It cannot be comprehended,
my 18-year-old still pushing and pulling
his own breath. And those 40 faces pity me,
knowing that I will soon be as they are,
numb to our bloodied histories,
favoring the Reaper with a thumbs-up and a wink,
hearing the question and shouting me, me,
Miss Smith, I know somebody dead!
Can poetry hurt us? they ask me before
snuggling inside my words to sleep.
1 love you, Nicole says, Nicole wearing my face,
pimples peppering her nose, and she is as black
as angels are. Nicoleâs braids clipped, their ends
kissed with match flame to seal them,
and can you teach me to write a poem about my mother?
I mean, you write about your daddy and he dead,
can you teach me to remember my mama?
A teacher tells me this is the first time Nicole
has admitted that her mother is gone,
murdered by slim silver needles and a stranger
rifling through her blood, the virus pushing
her skeleton through for Nicole to see.
And now this child with rusty knees
and mismatched shoes sees poetry as her scream
and asks me for the words to build her mother again.
Replacing the voice.
Stitching on the lost flesh.
So poets,
as we pick up our pens,
as we flirt and sin and rejoice behind microphonesâ
remember Nicole.
She knows that we are here now,
and she is an empty vessel waiting to be filled.
And she is waiting.
And she
is
waiting.
And she waits.
GIVING BIRTH TO SOLDIERS
February 1, 2005âTabitha Bonillaâs husband, Army Captain Orlando A. Bonilla, 27, was killed Wednesday in a helicopter accident in Baghdad. Her father, Army Sergeant First Class Henry A. Bacon, 45, died in Iraq last February.
She will pin ponderous medals to her
housedress, dripping the repeated roses,
while she claws through boxes filled with
him and then him. The accepting of Godâs
weird wisdom takes place over forkfuls
of rubbery casseroles and the snowy vows
of newsmen who measure her worth
in cued weeping. She offers her husbandâs
hands, a shrine of their mingled smells,
a warm seat on a couch of napped corduroy.
They offer one polished bone, scrubbed
clean of war. And she babbles of links and
irony, shrugs her numb shoulders, and feels
dimly blessed as a door slams shut on both
sides of her head. Suddenly, she is her
only history. Smiling politely beneath a fierce
salute, propped upright behind the crumpled
ghosts of her men, she is the catchy logo
for a confounded country. This day is the day
she has. Tomorrow, she will touch her own
breasts, she will dismantle a gaudy altar
with her teeth. And she will ask a bemused God
for guidance as she steps back into line,
her womb tingling vaguely with the next soldier.
IT HAD THE BEAT INEVITABLE
Itâs all right what Bobby Womack taught us, what Chaka growled,
O.K. to flaunt the hard stone double dutch planted in our calves.
Forgive Smokey for sending us off to search for that white horse
and the half-white boy riding it. Go on, shove that peppermint stick
down the center of that sour pickle, dine on a sandwich of Wonder
and souse, take your stand in that black woman assembly line to
scrape the scream from chitlins. Itâs all right that Mama caught the
âhound up from Alabama, that Daddy rode up from Arkansas and
youâre the only souvenir they got. We brown girls, first generation
brick, sparkling in Dacron and pink sweat socks, we went the only
way we could. Our weather vane, whirling in Chicago wind, was the
rusted iron torso of a stout black woman. We vanished for a while.
Gwen Brooks hissed Follow. We had no choice.
MISSISSIPPIâS LEGS
for
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