Self-Traction (audio only)
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Elegy, Surrounded by Seven Trees
for Michele Antoinette Pray-Griffiths
Ordinary days deliver joy easily
again & I can't take it. If I could tell you
how her eyes laughed or describe
the rage of her suffering, I must
admit that lately my memories
are sometimes like a color
warping in my blue mind.
2019
Discrepancies Regarding My Mother’s Departure
Another time after she left
I saw a headless woman
hurrying after her like a jaguar.
She pried off her red mouth
like a scar. My father folded the window
so that it fit inside his silence,
2016
Aubade to Langston
When the light wakes & finds again
the music of brooms in Mexico,
when daylight pulls our hands from grief,
& hearts cleaned raw with sawdust
& saltwater flood their dazzling vessels,
when the catfish in the river
raise their eyelids towards your face,
when sweetgrass bends in waves
across battlefields where sweat
& sugar marry, when we hear our people
wearing tongues fine with plain
greeting: How You Doing, Good Morning
when I pour coffee & remember
my mother's love of buttered grits,
2016