Why would I abandon the hunger-suffering
Vulture, spread-winged in the middle of the road
Eating a rabbit while it snows? Wouldn’t you
Want to touch, watch his comrades close down the sky
And, in a black circle, eat red on the white Earth?
And when the hiss of something slithers in—
Panic un-paused—wouldn’t you watch the circle
Break into black leaves pulled from the earth and flung
Into the falling sky? Wouldn’t you want to be
A servant of this paradise, not a God
In front of a screen, naked, lonely, asking—
No more a God than the crown of vultures
Frightened by a hiss that was a tire deflating?
Why would you trade Paradise for an argument
About Paradise?
Copyright © 2023 by Roger Reeves. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 19, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.
1
Outside, the thunder
Shakes the prison walls; inside
My heart shakes my ears.
2
(For Sonia)
Snow from the mountains
Of my heart instantly melts
In your warm Blackness.
3
Black men with Torches
Follow the bloody tracks of
The albino beast.
4
Gray jets drag white tails
Across blue skies; gray rats drag
Tails across black legs.
From The Lost Etheridge Knight: The Uncollected Poems of Etheridge Knight. Copyright © 2022 by Etheridge Knight. Published by Kinchafoonee Creek Press. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.