why do you let them?
come and leave?
like them and
love you, too?
what is the reason
behind settling for
sticks and stones?
for dimming your glow?
how come half their heart
is good enough for all or
your soul?
you bend back and break
bones for themin your home–
and yet they are allowed to stay
and make a mess of you.
why do you let them?
by Alex Elle
Tumbling down
a leaf as i leave you
with smokey memories and warm nights
I guess the Fall came fast enough
but there were days that stagnated
i needed
Reading the signs of change
like clasped hands cluctching knuckle skin
so long summer
catching weedles in the weeds
stinging needles from fat rains
immaturities
brown eyed honesty
i guess we both knew the end would
come for us
always,
always and never.
Long after the mothers uncross
their arms and the children who huddle
and wrap their shoulders in towels
stop shivering, when atop the tower the lifeguard collapses his red umbrella,
the beach is shorn of leisure and the colossal night is a call to worship for the anchorite
who heaves churns and roars against the planet’s decree as it prays,
and leaning in me you ask what could a sea this terrible and perfect possibly ever pray for:
waves smack in the jetty again and again and again as if asking for one thing.
We draw our blankets tight.
More and more we think we hear it.
a small hair sprouts
defying the odds
bursting through the surface
only to crinkle and bend
like palm trees in the wind
coconut oil eases the shaft
from root to ends
smooth, dipping my curls
into the Atlantic
becoming one with the island
and the wave
and the nappiness
of my kitchen
the way she might have as a child on family vacations
her thick black locs hang
like freedom
and nooses
and mangoes
strong and sweet as sugarcane
standing up
resisting gravity
and the box that bottles beauty
i fell in love with my bestfriend
where the tall grass grows
in the shadows
that which we call friend
by any other name is as sweet
so we played hide and seek
with our hearts
until the colors ran out of time
drowned in an awkward silence
i walk about my emotions
he ran
into my arms
warm
as the ground after a sand storm
bitter jazz
dripped from his cheek
as we speak of
the first days spinning into ever
fades the call of the trumpet
for something new
not friendship but the best of us
hidden
like a foreign constellation
among galaxies
colliding
syncopating
burning our music into existence
from humble beginnings
we danced
the world into a circle on its axis
broken winged
an eagle could not fly
so she dove down to earth
caught the pharoah’s eye
he liked the hurt bird
and without a word
ordered her taken care of
nights they’d watch
the moon unfurl
itself from the sky
his love healed her heart
but still she could not fly
deep in the darkness a coup
burnt his palace to the ground
and slaughtered his child
dethroned
he wandered
the desert alone
broken hearted
the king could not sing
so he laid
in the salt to die
above the cloud
he heard his eagle cry
with swift wings
she brings
a sack of water and gold
days went by
and the water went dry
fearing for her life
he left
while she slept
plunging into the depth
of the sun
he bargained his soul for her to be spared
where she lay in the sands
rose a lush mountain
she screamed to the heavens
abandoned
lonely
until her claws were stone
awaiting his return.
This is the Hour of Lead—
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons recollect the Snow—
First—Chill—then Stupor—then the letting go—
by Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)
This poem tells a story of the 1906 Atlanta riots.
Her eyes were gentle, her voice was for soft singing
In the stiff-backed pew, or on the porch when evening
Comes slowly over Atlanta. But she remembered.
She said: “After they cleaned out the saloons and the dives
The drunks and the loafers, the thought that they had better
Clean out the rest of us. And it was awful.
They snatched men off of streetcars, beat up women.
Some of our men fought back and killed, too. Still
It wasn’t their habit. And then the orders came
For the milishy, and the mob went home,
And dressed up in their soldiers’ uniforms,
And rushed back shooting just as wild as ever.
Some leaders told us to keep faith in the law,
In the governor; some did not keep that faith,
Some never had it; he was white, too, and the time
Was near election, and the rebs were mad.
He wasn’t stopping hornets with his head bare.
The white folks at the big houses, some of them
Kept all their servants home under protection
But that was all the trouble they could stand.
And some were put out when their cooks and yard-boys
Were thrown from cars and beaten, and came late or not at all.
And the police they helped the mob, and the milishy
They helped the police. And it got worse and worse.
“They broke into groceries, drugstores, barbershops,
it made no difference whether white or black.
They beat a lame bootblack until he died,
They cut an old man open with jackknives
The newspapers named us black brutes and mad dogs.
So they used a gun butt on the president
Of our seminary where a lot of folks
Had set up praying prayers the whole night through.
And then, “she said, “our folks got sick and tired
Of being chased and beaten and shot down.
All of a sudden, one day, they all got sick and tired
The servants they put down their mops and pans
And brooms and hoes and rakes and coachman whips,
Bad niggers stopped their drinking Dago red,
Good Negroes figured they had prayed enough,
All came back home–they had been too long away–
A lot of visitors had been looking for them.
They sat on their front stoops and in their yards,
Not talking much, but ready; their welcome ready:
Their shotguns oiled and loaded on their knees.
“And then
There wasn’t any riot anymore.”
by Sterling Brown
The Poetry Corner 