LITMIR.BIZ

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huddled like stones,

      my sister rocked her Shirley Temple

      doll to sleep. Three fat ushers fanned

      my grandmamas, used smelling salts.

      All my best friends—Cowlick,

      Sneaky Pete, Happy Jack, Pie Joe,

      & Comedown Jones.

      I could smell lavender,

      a tinge of dust. Their mouths,

      palms of their hands

      stained with mulberries.

      Daddy posed in his navy-blue suit

      as doubting Thomas: some twisted

      soft need in his eyes, wondering if

      I was just another loss

      he divided his days into.

Untitled Blues

       after a photography by Yevgeni Yevtushenko

      I catch myself trying

      to look into the eyes

      of the photo, at a black boy

      behind a laughing white mask

      he’s painted on. I

      could’ve been that boy

      years ago.

      Sure, I could say

      everything’s copacetic,

      listen to a Buddy Bolden cornet

      cry from one of those coffin-

      shaped houses called

      shotgun. We could

      meet in Storyville,

      famous for quadroons,

      with drunks discussing God

      around a honky-tonk piano.

      We could pretend we can’t

      see the kitchen help

      under a cloud of steam.

      Other lurid snow jobs:

      night & day, the city

      clothed in her see-through

      French lace, as pigeons

      coo like a beggar chorus

      among makeshift studios

      on wheels—Vieux Carré

      belles having portraits painted

      twenty years younger.

      We could hand jive

      down on Bourbon & Conti

      where tap dancers hold

      to their last steps,

      mammy dolls frozen

      in glass cages. The boy

      locked inside your camera,

      perhaps he’s lucky—

      he knows how to steal

      laughs in a place

      where your skin

      is your passport.

Jumping Bad Blues

      I’ve played cool,

      hung out with the hardest

      bargains, but never copped a plea.

      I’ve shot dice heads-up

      with Poppa Stoppa

      & helped him nail

      his phenomenal luck

      to the felt floor with snake eyes.

      I’ve fondled my life in back rooms,

      called Jim Crow out of his mansion

      in Waycross, Georgia, & taught

      him a lesson he’ll never forget.

Initials on Aspens

      The scar tissue says

       t. c. from dallas

      loves gertrude logan,

      etc. Flesh & metaphor.

      Sizzling iron, initials,

      whole families branded

      as private property.

      I am taken back

      to where torture chambers

      crank up at midnight

      like gothic gristmills

      in the big house

      & black tarantulas

      of blood cling to faces

      where industrial

      revolution repeatedly

      groans in the brain.

Family Tree

      I know better

      than a whip

      across my back,

      eyes swearing

      all the pain. Her father

      cut down so young

      in this stone garden.

      She knows how easy death

      takes root in a love song.

      That long chain

      in the red dust.

      Geechee

      bloodholler—

      my mother

      married at 15,

      with my ear pressed

      against the drum.

      When my father speaks

      of childhood, sunlight

      strikes a plowshare.

      Across the cotton field

      Muddy Waters’ bone-song

      rings true when my father speaks

      of Depression winters

      & a wheel within a wheel.

      My great-grandmama’s name

      always turns up

      like a twenty-dollar

      gold piece.

      Born a slave,

      how old her hands were.

      When my father speaks

      of hanging trees

      I know

      all the old prophets

      tied down in the electric chair.

      My grandmamas—

      Sunday night

      Genesis to Revelations

      testimonial hard line

      neo-auction block

      women. Kerosene

      lamps & cherry-red

      potbellied wood stoves

      & chopping cotton

      sunup to sundown

      mule-plowing black-metal

      blues women grow closer

      each year like

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