Vista: through the wire
Hair-tie
in Haiti mothers sprint so fast. to their children.
their hearts beat them home
on this island even mercy has a curfew.
we know the exact number of bodies you have to bury
before an entire country is a mass grave.
we know the answer is different in english
our first words clay in our mothers’ hands
they catch them mold them into a worship
we say manman before we say god
we know who runs when we cry
we know who cries when we run
no one believed them when they said they could fly
they’re collecting the feathers to prove it
apologizing to prove it
on bended knee
hair tied
planting a field of candles to prove it
willing to kiss a hurricane back to prove it.
We aren’t from a country
We are from wounds that fester into borders
the ocean does nothing but salt them
my mother is from a place where sleep and death really do share a grandmother
my father is every mistake a man could make while worshiping. the wrong God.
he doesn’t recognize the man smiling. with his wife. in wedding photos.
my mother is one of those women who was old before she was young
as she aged her photos wrinkled with her.
my favorite game. is closing my eyes. imagining her small and dancing.
she is always eating
an empty belly reminds her too much of the miscarriages
she sings while she cooks
in the cracks of her voice i see
how much money she has to send to Haiti for the funerals
she checks beneath her children’s tongues for her country and her God no sign
proof your children are capable of betraying you in a language you never gave them
she prays alone
she cries alone
she wastes all her good magic trying to get me home safe
most days i don't even come home
Revelation 3:20
I know asthma does to a lung
the same thing war does
to a country
my mother coughs
while she prays
where there’s smoke
there’s God
where there’s God
there’s gunpowder
we are so filled with burning city
we find touches of it
in the salt of it all
where there’s God
there’s gunpowder
my mother is at the sink
singing a gospel
that builds a road
from our living room
to Jerusalem
where there’s smoke
there’s God
her hands are burned
from bleach or bible study
washing or worship
she turns the knob, whispers Jericho
Flint city falls from the faucet.
Port au Prince pursues.
her children ignore her cries
the white of their eyes
flap like the American flag
where there’s smoke
we count our children
and our empty beds
we know how easy it is
to fall asleep
on a pillow
awaking
anywhere on the map.
there’s gunpowder
we who have moved,
with bags too small
to pack a country
grieved;
passports turn
into prayer books
learned English in emergency rooms
while doctors stamp the pages.
there’s God
there’s gunpowder
our immigration status is revelation 3:20
Had to be a gun.
i drew a bath in antebellum, soaking something i forgot to name
my mother would call this god forsaken but i have only known god
to be the light echoing off an exit sign on nights when i am dizzier than vinyl.
even under squint-sky she was white, and I was naked
I fell skin first slowly into the soft blood-fabric of history
i drew a picture of my only sin said amen and ashed it
swore i wouldn’t black like that tonight swore i would
not allow hickies on my neck in my own bed
not skinny dip into king-cotton with a perfect white stranger
i won’t sweat sugar cane, or bleed coffee, won’t turn bedroom
to bible and flip through the book of matches, won’t burn no church
no cross glowing in the wild, no halleluiah for a harvest. no tree grows a corpse as fruit
on purpose but of course, even with all the shadow flavoring the space between us
she found my lips like a white only fountain clean as a whistle too many miles
south to be allowed if a train leaves Chicago at 14. still
black and going too fast finds the crooked letter crooked letter of a southern
Belle’s hip…spilled onto the tracks how else does it warn that she is too close to something that can kill her.
up north a whistle and a Belle make for a choir
after all winter lays in a place like this…snow swallowing asphalt
i waded through the blue in her eyes for miles. spilling. so much Nile,
so much Jordan, & Mississippi that besides us only the crickets
could appetite this open casket—neither of us could name what died
she got to being a boat with a belly
she got to being hands for eyes and a mouth for hands
and she searched my body everywhere. she had to know for sure
she had to see for herself. she looked all over for the mason dixon,
the grandfather clause, the hot comb sizzling
and god knows she looked for the gun. there just had to be a gun.
