“LUDGER SYLBARIS RUNS AMUCK, MARTINIQUE ERUPTION SURVIVOR & BARNUM PERFORMER IN THE ALBANY JAIL”
by Blu Mehari
— Kingston Daily Freeman, Volume XXXII, Number 196
By now, I believe in internment—
the virtue of this cell and the virtue
of its brother, that safest cage,
the thin leash of sun beneath its door
where the fumes shouldered in,
its hush like thick pitch—black
against my black skin,
black-haired and blackening.
Lying there, my piss-soaked
jumpsuit stuffed in the gap
everything breached
but time. The searchers
understood my moans as a cow’s,
some naive half-cooked beast
bleating in the rubble. Unveiled,
it was as if I’d been carved
from charcoal, though that
can’t be right. When charcoal
burns, it is consumed.
Beneath mine, I remained.
THE MOST MARVELOUS
MAN, Barnum stamped me,
THE ONE LIVING OBJECT
IN THE SILENT CITY.
And I was. I read it
in the circus-goers’ gawk,
their lips peeling apart and keeping wide,
imagining its grimy fingers,
the avenue its feet charred
across my asphalt.
The image repeats—drunk,
out of my mind in the yard
outside the big tent, looked upon
again, like a feral creature
or moving relic, pining
for the bleach of pain, mine
or someone else’s. On Martinique,
when there was little
else to covet,
I asked for whatever
stale bread the men had
and unlatched the scarred-over
gate at my mouth. Outside,
winter reclaims Albany.
I palm my heartbeat, its surprise.
There is nothing left
to envy. I’m sick
of getting what I want.