Epiphany Davis, 1825

I set up my cash box and my bones and cards
on Broadway, most days, offering what I see
of what’s to come. For a donation, words
fall from my mouth, surprising even me.

Uncle Epiphany doesn’t forecast death
or illness worse than gout or a broken bone.
The sailors stop. They listen with caught breath
as I tell them some girl’s heart is still theirs alone.

(… or not. Young love is such a butterfly.)
Girls come, arms linked, giggling behind their fans.
The sad come. Uncle Epiphany does not lie.
I close shop, and come back up here to my land.

It’s a new world up here, of beggar millionaires:
neighbors who know how we all scrimped and saved
to own this stony swamp with its fetid air,
to claim the dream for dreamers yet enslaved.

I’m Epiphany Davis. I am a conjure-man.
I see glimpses. Glass towers … A horseless vehicle …
An American President who is half African …
Until you pay me, that’s all I’m going to tell.

^{I wish I knew how
It would feel to be free
I wish I could break
All the chains holding me
               —Nina Simone}

today i am a black woman in america
& i am singing a melody ridden lullaby
it sounds like:
              the gentrification of a brooklyn stoop
              the rent raised three times my wages
              the bodega and laundromat burned down on the corner
              the people on the corner
                          each lock & key their chromosomes
                          a note of ash & inquiry on their tongues
 
today i am a black woman in a hopeless state
i will apply for financial aid and food stamps
          with the same mouth i spit poems from
i will ask the angels of a creative god to lessen
          the blows
& i will beg for forgiveness when i curse
          the rising sun

today, i am a black woman in a body of coal
i am always burning and no one knows my name
i am a nameless fury, i am a blues scratched from
the throat of ms. nina—i am always angry
i am always a bumble hive of hello
i love like this too loudly, my neighbors
think i am an unforgiving bitter
            sometimes, i think my neighbors are right
            most times i think my neighbors are nosey

today, i am a cold country, a storm
brewing, a heat wave of a woman wearing
red pumps to the funeral of my ex-lover’s

today, i am a woman, a brown and black &
brew woman dreaming of freedom

today, i am a mother, & my country is burning
           and i forget how to flee
from such a flamboyant backdraft
                       —i’m too in awe of how beautiful i look
            on fire

Bam got tight eyes 
             Real tight 
He crazy, girl 
             But he fun to be around 
He’s so funny 
             He the life of the party 
He the oldest of them boys over on Alcatraz 
             He love them birds – the pigeons 
That’s what I heard 
             He got a cage in the backyard 
He got a cage on the roof 
             He make the cage out of cardboard & wire 
He scale roofs 
             He think he (can) fly 
I heard he stole the pigeon from Albert’s coop 
             All them boys went looking for Bam 
He just waited for them on the stoop 
             I heard they went looking through his flock 
Heard they ain’t found nothing 
             Heard they ain’t believe him 
I heard his daddy made him fight them one-on-one 
             Everybody know they call him Bam cause of his hands 
Cause his eyes so tight & you never know when he go boom! 
             He always had quick hands 
That’s how he call them birds back home 
             The rough of his hands clapping & singing loud 
That’s how he fought them boys 
             His hands ain’t but a blur 
He slap against the wind & win 
             Them boys ain’t never forgot 
But hell, what they goin’ do—he see everything 
             His eyes so tight you never know what he thinking 
He cracked his knuckles & they jumped on him 
             He clap his hands fast & it sound like a splintered bone 
They say the it sound like firecrackers 
             He say the birds can hear him that way 
He say if he clap loud enough they know to come home 
             He say home with his mouth big & smiling 
But his eyes never change, he’s so handsome 
             They say that’s how he knew where to hide Albert’s pigeon 
Say he hid Albert’s bird behind the broken board 
             His eyes shine like crazy laughter man lightning 
He got hands like his daddy 
             His hands are so quick 
                          —They steal anything worth something 

The gun—purchased legally
by our parents when I was ten,

shown to us, placed in our hands
that we might sense the weight, then placed

on a shelf any of us
could reach, though we did not, not yet—

pulled by our mother six years
later as I straddled her son’s

small body to stop his fists
from battering me—our mother,

misreading the scene, seeing
her youngest in danger, and me,

too large in her mind to be
handled any other way— our

mother holding the gun and
shaking the gun and crying, caught

in an act of betrayal,
not yet angry that I would run,

sock clad, to Sam’s Pitt Stop Fried
Chicken and Fish to tell Sam Pitt,

my boss from the last summer
to tell him with incredulity—

no, with something more naïve,
say, shock or hurt, that my mother

had just pulled a gun on me,
the good child, the obedient

child, and she, later, saying
she had no other choice

she had to save her boy,
the malt liquor on her breath,
the blue bull in her blood, remorse,

perhaps, in her voice as she
asked, without asking, for forgiveness,

the gun returned to the shelf.