“O Blood of the River of songs, O songs of the River of Blood,” Let me lie down. Let my words Lie sound in the mouths of men Repeating invocations pure And perfect as a moan That mounts in the mouth of Bessie Smith. Blues for the angels kicked out Of heaven. Blues for the angels Who miss them still. Blues For my people and what water They know. O weary drinkers Drinking from the bloody river, Why go to heaven with Harlem So close? Why sing of rivers With fathers of our own to miss? I remember mine and taste a stain Like blood coursing the body Of a man chased by a mob. I write His running, his sweat: here, He climbs a poplar for the sky, But it is only sky. The river? Follow me. You’ll see. We tried To fly and learned we couldn’t Swim. Dear singing river full Of my blood, are we as loud under Water? Is it blood that binds Brothers? Or is it the Mississippi Running through the fattest vein Of America? When I say home, I mean I wanted to write some Lines. I wanted to hear the blues, But here I am swimming in the river Again. What flows through the fat Veins of a drowned body? What America can a body call Home? When I say Congo, I mean Blood. When I say Nile, I mean blood. When I say Euphrates, I mean, If only you knew what blood We have in common. So much, In Louisiana, they call a man like me Red. And red was too dark For my daddy. And my daddy was Too dark for America. He ran Like a man from my mother And me. And my mother’s sobs Are the songs of Bessie Smith Who wears more feathers than Death. O the death my people refuse To die. When I was 18, I wrote down The river though I couldn’t win A race, climbed a tree that winter, then Fell, flat on my wet, red face. Line After line, I read all the time, But “there was nothing I could do About race.”
Copyright © 2010 by Jericho Brown. Used by permission of the author.
Breathe
. As in what if
the shadow is gold
en? Breathe. As in
hale assuming
exhale. Imagine
that. As in first
person singular. Homonym
:. As in subject. As
in centeroftheworld as in
mundane. The opposite of spectacle
spectacular. This is just us
breathing. Imagine
normalized respite
gold in shadows
. You have the
right to breathe and remain
. Imagine
that
.
Copyright © 2019 by Rosamond S. King. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 5, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
and if
I were to say
I love you and
I do love you
and I say it
now and again
and again
would you say
parataxis
would you see
the world revolves
anew
its axis
you
From Same Life by Maureen McLane. Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Copyright © 2008 by Maureen McLane. All rights reserved.
one is hard & the other tried to be
one is fast & the other was faster
one is loud & one is a song
with one note & endless rest
one's whole life is a flash
both spend their life
trying to find a warmth to call home
both spark quite the debate,
some folks want to protect them/some think we should just get rid
of the damn things all together.
Copyright © 2014 by Danez Smith. Reprinted from Split This Rock’s The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database.