Forecast

East Williamsburg, 2006

 

today it will rain. an apparition on the wall

of the staircase: one long crooked streak

of blue marker. on

chipped paint it declares:

Lucy was here.  paint over me, but you won’t

 

tend to me

but you won’t

one day who knows this building

may be clean & crawling with the tattooed

& the pierced--

 

wafted, gently

with the smoke of eight-dollar

cigarettes--coolly trembling with the laughter

of the trust-funded rebellious.

today it will rain.

 

a blue marker will be left in the back& will bleed

in the ground to fertilize the tangled

tomatoes growing in the gap between the fence

& the concrete

a bike will maybe rust.

 

Billy who sleeps on a mattress on the corner

will ring the bell

that no one rings

because everyone in the building would hear.

i will be on the roof

 

on the phone to someplace

far. shoulders water-startled, i may go down.

the bell below will keep ringing.

one day next month Lucy & them will move & they

will be fenced in somewhere else & there

 

will be another street they’re not allowed

to play on out front, with a different

name.  today it rains.

the stuck bell buzzes. inside

dinners continue despite it.

 

a jump rope is abandoned;

all will be washed clean

 

 

 

Know No Creole

Ninth Ward, 1940

 

now we live

back-a-town

 

daddy’s wife is called dearie

and she does not speak to me

 

can you still find us

here?

 

in school i am learning

french words for apple

 

one two three

i live

 

but when she comes my big maman speaks

another world to daddy

 

ma i try my mouth

in the shape of their words

 

they are round balls

my tongue slips

 

speak english here, daddy says

children should speak english

 

you did not keep the dark away

when you left into it

 

you took all the words

now words are less

 

than they used to be

they want to scrub we kids

 

clean with pretty white words

they want the new city to sparkle

 

with plain talk

for future generations

 

i want to know

do you have anymore

 

words to call me by

and do you pray to earth again?

 

ma i give you words on their

way to god

 

if you need me to press my mouth

into the ground

 

to tell it things for you

i will do that

 

 

 

The Old Thousands

Ninth Ward, 2006

 

not far, a  convention of 30,000 realtors

crowds a hotel on the mississippi —not

one leaves without his string

of mardi gras beads

 

the eyes of each shine with wine

they want to rush in and fill

the flat land by the levee as

the waters did

 

back there:

a shoe

a razor

a thousand times

 

can’t move but to kick something

that should be on someone’s

shelf

not under the crunch of foot

 

not under a car

not 300 yards

away in a stranger’s yard

 not on a stranger’s shelf

in Georgia

 

a blouse.

a toy wheel.

a row of disembodied concrete stoops

no houses to them, but shreds

and sticks, and paper

a thousand times

 

let’s make this city

like its old black women:

would-be wrinkles smoothed

by the wet air’s heavy hands

beautiful mummies

sucking in rot on the wind

 

let’s gut it.

who is left to wish the day was not so hollow?

and that the wind didn’t blow so

over the walled lake

like a flute?