or teachers, guides whose gestures I recall better than names
so much I’ve been taught I have yet to know
but ode to every stitch of braid past my mother’s fingertips
sewing countless
buttons for every day my grandmother
cooked and cleaned house twice
& Sis. Eugenia Foster
who kept my brother and I in summer who taught me
steeping and drinking tea & how I could call for someone
but not cry when they passed over
the wind chimes too all their constant worry with wind
even after her stroke my grandmother Dorothy rose on cold nights
pulled a heavy leg down the hall
to cover me with a quilt
her own grandmother quilted
on his days off my only father
lacquered my found rocks
praised my keen eye
wasn’t he urging me to notice?
I see now,
all this gracious lack of accounting & maybe too
how tonight in terrific storm when the wind picked up and pitched
warning this primal body took off running
homing through our dark house
towards the beds where my children sleep
Copyright © 2024 by Kwoya Maples. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 7, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.
We need quarters like King Tut needed a boat. A slave could row him to heaven from his crypt in Egypt full of loot. We've lived quietly among the stars, knowing money isn't what matters. We only bring enough to tip the shuttle driver when we hitch a ride aboard a trailblazer of light. This comet could scour the planet. Make it sparkle like a fresh toilet swirling with blue. Or only come close enough to brush a few lost souls. Time is rotting as our bodies wait for now I lay me down to earth. Noiseless patient spiders paid with dirt when what we want is star dust. If nature abhors an expensive appliance, why does the planet suck ozone? This is a big ticket item, a thickety ride. Please page our home and visit our sigh on the wide world’s ebb. Just point and cluck at our new persuasion shoes. We’re opening the gate that opens our containers for recycling. Time to throw down and take off on our launch. This flight will nail our proof of pudding. The thrill of victory is, we’re exiting earth. We're leaving all this dirt.
Originally published in Santa Monica Review, fall 1997. Copyright © 1997 by Harryette Mullen. All rights reserved. Used by permission of the author.