I slept through the whole thing
Two floors above me
“the brother from Senegal”
on the roof’s edge ready
to trade one kingdom for another,
his long swarthy legs dangling
in the dusk of Anacostia morning
My neighbors said
“his whole body shook”
with weeping—the kind
of grief we have forgotten,
or have become too dignified to show
His wife left him
the night before;
his kingdom had come
& gone
Later that morning
I wanted to ask him if there
is a Wolof word
for the blues
or if there is any music
with notes large enough.
From Blood/Sound (Central Square Press, 2019). Copyright © 2019 by Fred L. Joiner. Used with the permission of the author.