I told them
On and on they hollered
In prayer
Their palms pressed
Oil to my forehead
I’ll fly away oh glory
I’ll fly away in the morning
They faked my healing
I cannot account for what evil
May enter.
As we leave LaSalle Street to catch a bus for an afternoon at the Shedd, the sound of a busker’s Deerness Two Step coming up the corridor of red marble attracts our daughter, pulling her forward in the stroller. We round the corner before the escalators and she begins to laugh at the carefully suited, smiling man with tufts of white hair blooming like open cotton bolls under his fedora. Reflected light makes the steel strings of his fiddle shimmer, shine like Orion’s Belt where they cross the flattened arch of the bridge behind the bow. My wife lifts our toddler, stands her on the stack-bond tile where she strikes that spread-legged, arm-flapping stance universal to happy two-year olds and begins to dance. Meeting her energy, accustomed to audiences of all ages, the maybe-a-grandfather shifts to The Blue Danube Waltz, rises fluidly, and twirls around the space with a maybe-future-Terpsichore keeping place by his side until the music ends. They bow, resume respective seats, and wave each other good-bye, off on their memory-joined journeys.
Take out a table
Spread it with a cloth
Put on some corn
Add a little squash
Save all your pennys
Put ’em in a jar
Gonna get to Europe?
Nope, not that far
Rose buds, Chicken clucks
Little kitty’s fur
Housework, Housework
Grrr, Grrr ,Grrr
Rainy days, Sunny days
Paste in a can
Little tommy tucker
didn’t grow to be a man
Hop scotch, plate toss
Rag-a-muffin pie
Old wooden marbles
in a tin plate sky
Moonshine, croon shine
Think I’ll sing a song
Been about forever
So ya better sing along
My dad told me our neighborhood
was once a rock quarry.
The developers planted houses
and oaks in those stones, and evergreens
we used to snake our bodies
between when I made us play my favorite game
(orphans, pretending to be lost in the woods)
Now that I’m grown and actually lost,
I think of our big sisters: firstborn and blind, nothing to grasp but stones and schoolbooks.
A boyfriend, a bedroom wall with magazine cutouts taped on, all their hand-me-down dresses they cried in before we got to wear them.
Flowerbedded in brambles,
I’ve been nestled in the lingering of the evening,
Joyous in ever inch of presence.
Mazeless and amazed,
I’ve woken in gardencountry again,
Wandering through petals.
(Thanks to Shaun for letting me borrow his word)
In the midst of mowing Mother’s backyard
I spot the forgotten ravages my father’s garden
Just weeks since we recycled his ashes
Back to the earth he once tended
A drinker tonguethick and stumblelimbed
We avoided the slap of his deep bottle
My mother believed in vows
Stoically staying until death did its part
We thought she’d welcome the freedom
But even heartache grows habit
I shut off the mower contemplate the chaos
His small plot a host of weed-fuming spores
This earthly sanctuary never judged my father
Soil offering its own language of forgiveness
Like his my fingers seek comfort
In the rich loamy promise the forecast of seed Gardening the only common ground
He and I had in our tumultuous past
I start at one corner my bare hands
A busy ministry a psalm of unraveling
Scientist on the radio:
“If life on Earth were a calendar year,
human existence until right now
would only mark the very last second.”
This morning, together,
we all woke up and focused
our blurry vision, began listing plans,
dividing the time, easy as a knife
through segments of gemlike orange.
As for me, this morning like every other:
sun rose as promised.
This world moved
upon itself, around the sun
like it always has: night
bleached away here, the very rock
moving centimeter-slow beaneath
our feet.
Shuffle of feet, rattle of unseen
silverware and flatware and glass.
Speaking (so very much talking),
hushed and hurried and raucous, and
listening (perhaps listening) eyes devouring eyes
and movement, forming, reforming, flanking,
attack and defense (and alcohol) lines pushing and pulling,
vying for position along the precipice
of social interaction…
and everything I am is
penitence in the elbow
barely touching your elbow;
worlds without words
in that prayer.
I finally give in
and buy two
ancestry testing kits.
One for my mother,
one for me.
When I get my results I find
I am still mostly white.
Less Native than i was told.
A little Iberian, Jewish, Asian,
and African.
I call my grandmother.
I want to tell her to burn a cross
in her own yard
or throw away her racism.
I choke up when she answers.
Consumed by excuses of my own
to love someone
who doesn’t know
she hates the wombs
she’s spiraled trough.
When I remember why I called,
I feel an unraveling in my throat.
All those umbilical chords being cut.
I remember calling her a mutt
when I was 8.
She had yelled racist slurs
at an unexpecting man
in the “Rural King,” store.
She told me to think
about how I was speaking
to my elders.
I return her advice now.
I am matched with my DNA relatives.
The website reminds me
my mom
is half me.
She was scared
of the government having
her DNA.
I laugh at
my fucked up family
and know in some ways,
we are still
too similar.
the bliss of the humid
air, made you stick onto me
while my hands linger
down the indentions
of your spine
i pray the hot concrete
wont singe my fingerprints
off your skin
