As Dad drove up on thecouple
arguing in the street, Stevie Wonder

warbled My Cherie Amour on the radio.
The man jabbed his finger into the woman’s face,

his own face torqued into a scream. 

When she tried to movearound him,

he blocked her with hisbroad body,

and they left the traceof their argument

printed in the treepollen that the new leaves

had dusted onto theroad.  Dad pulled

his Chevette betweenthem, and told me, six,

to roll down my window.  The woman

leaned in, her brown eyeslike glass beads,

and pleaded, Don’t lethim bruise me. 

Reaching diagonallyacross the car,

Dad popped the lock.  The woman clambered

into the backseat, whilethe man

beat the roof above Dad’shead,

screaming, You leavewith her,
I’ll hurt you both.  ButDad eased out

the clutch and the carrolled away into D.C. 

After she gavedirections, the woman didn’t talk

till we got to her place, just sat in theback

and bobbed her head tothe Howard station

WHUR, Sounds LikeWashington, soul.

Comin for to Carry Me

Some nights in theYorubaland
of dreams, I carry a wooden statue
of Shango, god of thunder.

 

I drop it near a termitemound,
and white ants rove out
and devour it.  When they finish,
I am alone in the Virginia woods.
All I see is the carnage of angels.

 

I wake with a memory ofcheekbones

scarred during thePassage
or in flight through the swamp.

 

But this is the curse: Ican never
be home, can only imagine the places
my blood has been.  The best I cando
is string bottles in the trees to ward off
duppies and thieves, bury anickel
in the yard, buffalo side up, to keep
the Devil from between my walls.

I am lost in thisindustrial brick and rust,
surrounded by colonies of white ants,
where metallic clanks measure out my days.
Above this, nothing is audible, save
at dusk, a moan: the soul’s plaint
to the body, calling across the centuries
of their separation, call without response.

 

 

 

Childof the Sun

 

 

Great Great Aunt Aida

trained her lapdog

to attack dark-skinnedmen. 

A shake of her high-yaller head

and a suck on her ivoryteeth,

and the Scottish terrierslipped

through the fence pickets
and nipped at a tar baby’sankles.

 

Somewhere in her heaven,

Aunt Aida fusses today:
the lightest Haley yet,

naked to the waist

in a plastic lawn chair,

I am a tanner of calfhide,

curing my skin in thesun,

browning my limbs likestrips

of chicken in a skillet.

 

Aida dreamed the family

would fade into awhiteness

of table manners and booklearning,

and with me she cameclose.

But Mom must have eaten

a pig’s foot when she waspregnant,

or played those Aretharecords

too loudly.  Or, I took it too hard,

 

that time in the grocerystore

when a woman confused

my caramel brown Mother

for my nanny: I stay inthe yard

 

all afternoon, hoping toblind

my eyes with scales andmolt

like a sidewinder, toleave behind

a trail of skin, flaking,brittle and white,

cracking and split in thesun.

 

 

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