A Fire She Loved
The whiskey slipped into the cut
between her first finger and her thumb
as she raised the lowball glass and
she didn’t stop to rinse it, she didn’t wince until
her long pull was already midway down
her throat. A fire she loved. Heavier and warmer
than the feel on her face of the oven
as she worked through the night
into the early morning, halfway-drunk
in the ancient basement kitchen
of her former high school’s lunchroom.
An industrial oven. Wide enough for five pies,
dark tins as broad as her father’s open hands.
Meat pies or fruit pies, but most often her famous
sweet potato. The smell of such sweetness
as she lifted and leaned mixed with her body’s sweat
and was at first sacred, then nauseating, then nothing at all
when it became the habit of her life. Everyday, unrelenting
reality. She would sing
under her breath spirituals
that surprised her about herself. She was long grown
beyond the church, but she remembered. On this before-morning:
No weapon, formed against me, shall prosper …
It won’t work, no weapon —
Almost absurd, but not, as she slides
the cutting board and trusted knife away, into
the potato skin tatters, and takes a bigger caramel swig,
considering the smoke of it, smiling to herself, lately. She wonders
not how she got down there, but why she stayed
down there. And did the work
that she did, feeding so many, on her own.
* * * * * * *
My Big Brother, Oblivion
In paradise I poised my foot above the boat and said:
Who prayed for me? *
The gloss-red circle that is the bottom
of the beat-up Solocup begins to tilt
back down toward the ground
and his nose then his mouth
come back
into view — the pupils of his syrupy eyes never leave
the question of my face. I still can’t tell
how old he is, how young he is —
he pulls
a long thick puff then a quick sharp one
at the end, before a rush of white smoke
spills up to heaven from his dark lips, before
he says, You betta hold on tight to life, brotha.
* The epigraph quotes James Wright’s poem, “Father.”
* * * * * * *
American Football
I wanted to be a trophy before I wanted to be a man.
I wanted to be a weapon before I wanted to be safe.
My helmet is a mask. Pencil-thin bars
cage my face, fiberglass and hard white pads
hug my skull. I know the boy I am. I know
the boy in the body of a man
who wants to be precise violence.
A skilled threat on a torn field —
our bodies decorate the coliseum ground.
We reset and collide. We draw each line
where faith bangs against brutality, where
pain headlongs into desire. I remember
my ringing ears and trotting softly
to the sideline called home
after I launched my body into a boy
who cradles a ball and escapes
in zagging lines, side to side as if his life
depends on it. Get up off the ground. I fear
what I’ve done to my body —
my blood filled with the sound
of mothers chanting battle cries
over their rampant sons. The quiet brooding
fathers. Maybe I’ll always be the boy trying to find the eyes
of a miraculous girl lollingin the stands, deep in her own game, looking away
from the cage over my face —
sprawled in my first autumn,
I learn the taste of my own sweat —
to be black and uniformed defines
my body as a sacrifice. I wanted to be a trophy
before I wanted to be a man. I wanted to be a weapon
before I wanted to be safe. I fear I’m still that brutal dream,
body strapped inside devotion —
I can’t imagine my calloused hands relaxed
at my sides, their tenderness left open.