^{On August 2, 2010, siblings and cousins Takeitha Warner, 13; JaMarcus Warner, 14; JaTavious Warner, 17; Litrelle Stewart, 18; LaDarius Stewart, 17; and Latevin Stewart, 15, drowned in the Red River in Shreveport, Louisiana in attempt to save DeKendrix Warner, 15, who was rescued.}

One of they own was down in the belly of the river, so The Six dove and flew, neither flippered nor winged, as if air could hold them, as if riverwater was sweet.

The children believed in miracles, believed they was miracles, believed life was not life without they people.

Somebody said they was searching for stars but looked down into them waves. The stars they perceived was brother, sister, cousin, each eye shining with rivermud studded with gemstone, each mouth open and gleaming with tooth, gold, child-holler. 

So, they did what humans do when they fall in love: fall. Flung they bodies in full panic, full surrender, one after another after another after another after another, one behind the other, into riverwater—We blood in life, blood in death, ain’t we, Blood?—drowned as one sound. 

Water was neither translucent nor transparent, which means not one could read their futures, which were dying as they dove, dying as their limbs did not heed the love-command of they individual hearts to stroke and live, stroke and live, but stroke they did, stroke they did.

Ingested riverwater
like shine—mud, sediment, sludge—
they blues turned mouth,
part holy, part tomb:

Kin, when you go, I go.
We bout to die soon.

How many sat underwater,
entangled by myth’s past tense,
before Neptune first raised his
beard in the direction of Ethiopia,
and after, Odysseus—
always living—
was saved by Homer’s tablet?
Centuries after that story was written,
in the land of Not Make Believe,
a crew of slave-ship sailors
threw one hundred and thirty-two
Africans into the Atlantic Ocean.
Heave-ho to souls.
And people. And laws. And kin.
But Odysseus lives. He always will,
Our Great White Hope—
before whiteness was invented—
this hero who longs for the wood’s sway.
Despite his tendency to chase tail—
sirens and sundry other
poppycock-drinking girls—
I want to be happy that Homer imagined
a sea housing pretty, forgiving Nymphs—
while somewhere else, a wheel dances
and someone else drowns.
Sharks should pass Odysseus by,
never imagining his taste.
The gods shouldn’t pull at his fate—
now angry, now benevolent.
I try hard not to blame that man:
We all deserve our Maker’s love.