Cheryl Clarke
Uvalde, Texas, May 24, 2022
Poetry may be superfluous:
to poetize the event the moment
11-year old M. took and rubbed all over herself
the blood of one of her 19 fallen classmates
and lay down next to her.
(‘Pretend to sleep, baby,’ counseled the wise
Charleston grandmother at Mother Emanuel’s horror.)11
Dare I versify how it was
to witness her two teachers gunned down
(who might have at one time taught the assassin):
to be the first, tenth, or eighteenth fourth-grader shot
by an anomalous automatic rifle toting malcontent killer
(not that good a shot either,
except when right
up close in tight space).
For nearly an hour
murder and mayhem swift as early COVID
ravaged two Texas classrooms, adjoined.
‘It always begins with misogyny,’ says an erudite bookseller.
And police wait not to be afraid?
lipstick corny
lipstick
on wine glass corny
mark of femme-memory.
sage, basil, dill, parsley:
gifts to our worthless, reckless, feckless souls.
every one harvested in planted pots.
too many cigarettes
–never free of nicotene’s je ne sais quoi–and reefer jamais assez
(no matter your late dealer ever busted or robbed in 43 years)—
Then, spotting the wine glass take it up.
‘I’ll have wine now.’
‘Sure, want red? There’s also Vouvray.’
‘I prefer the red.’
pour from the Malbec, its bright magenta rim.
so much cover.
and a next morning memory
ephemeral
lipstick traces on wine glass
corny
or
gift
against my dread of naming?
Serious
How to take my love serious as a heart attack? Papa had one
(and was the same mean ole bastard, after, he always was).
Mother say, ‘Be patient.’
‘Be serious,’ I say.
And I’m serious.
My love, I’m ready to run away with you
with us.
I been calling you.
The car is gassed.
I got all the cash Papa keep in his top drawer
and magic we need for nine hours of driving.
Put your license in your wallet.
I’m coming for you.
‘You’re all I need to get by.’
Be outside, my love. Can’t double park long.
Be brave.
As long as we together.
We be strong as the eagle elephant
hippo python Kodiak bear.
Pack light.
I’m coming, my love.
Can’t turn back, now,
no matter what your mother promise she give you
(like that ‘95 Camaro).
Not even that Visa card.
Bring two pairs of shoes.
I’m calling.
I’m coming
Be waiting for me, my love.
Outside.
Outside.
Spring 2022
Winter—
wondrous wounded fowl
claw slammed and splayed
on rash window sill.
herdless camel nuz-
zles tractor, its only friend
in boys’ country day
camp.
Jo’burg, 2016
I love South Africa.
But I don’t know if I love Jo’burg.
Did I tell you about the Apartheid Museum there?
Zee, 30, a Jo’burg native with a Steve Biko face,
accompanied me as a guide, at the behest of my friend.
Zee had never seen the Museum either.
Entrance tickets randomly given: ‘ Blanken.’ ‘Nie Blanken.’2
Luckily, we both got ‘Nie Blanken’’ tickets.
We saw the exhibits together.
We paralleled and parroted each other’s movements
And approached with care the many small exhibits.
One large striking exhibit: The Room of 131 Nooses
signifying anti-Apartheid activists—not just ANC3—
executed for their resistance—
many tortured to death.
Executions officially ended in 1989.
Another was the Glass Wall Of Names of Black South Africans murdered
for being revolutionaries from 1962-1989:
Name Date Township Manner of Death:
____ ___ ______ shot in the head
____ ___ ______ beaten with a blunt object
____ ___ ______ asphyxiation
____ ___ ______ burned to death
____ ___ ______ buried alive
Last Night
Beloved beloved, thirty days you
have been my heart’s core of meaning.
Now, I must return to the melancholy same:
Don my makeshift mask. Wash,
dry, and shelve dishes until
the last customer leaves arrogantly, and I
dare not return to your lovely kitchen to pre-
pare a very excellent meal of pork,
pitted, pickled black olives, pine nuts, and onions,
over homemade noodles, and farm fresh lettuce,
tomatoes, and cucumber toasted up with some contraband.
An end
to our nightly trysts. How can it?
And what will finally be the gist of it.
Targets4
North Miami—or any part of Miami for that matter
remember Liberty City, 1980, Arthur McDuffie—
PD snipers finishing target-practicing on mug shots
of black male subjects—some as old as 15 years—
when an unsuspecting upstanding clarinetist Sgt.
of the Florida Army National Guard Band enters
with her fellow Guardspersons for ‘weapons qualification
training’ and sees—amidst hulking white bodies bulked up with tats
in short tee shirts tight levis cowboy boots baseball football trucker caps
and lo hoodies littering the floor— her brother’s image amongst
other targets scored with bullets—complains poignantly of ‘hits’
in his head and eye—declaims brother’s respectability: ‘That’s not
his life. He’s a father. He’s a husband. He’s a career man. He works a 9-5.’
(From Targets (Bushel Editions), 2020.)
- Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston is the church where nine people at a prayer meeting were gunned down by a white supremacist, June 17, 2015. ↩︎
- Translates from Dutch as ‘non-white.’ ‘Blanken’ and ‘Nie Blanken’ ticketholders see different presentations of the same material. This, of course, is a smart attempt to allow patrons to experience briefly the emotional ache of racial separation. What if my friend, Z., and I had been given different tickets, i.e., “Blanken” and “Nie-Blanklen.” ↩︎
- African National Congress,” the revolutionary party which spearheaded the breakdown of Apartheid. ↩︎
- https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/family-outraged-after-north-miami-beach-police-use-criminal-photos-as-shooting-targets/57613/ ↩︎