The People's History of 1998

France won the World Cup. 

Our dark-goggled dictator died from eating

a poisoned red apple  

though everyone knew it was the CIA.  

We lived miles from the Atlantic. 

 We watched Dr. Dolittle, Titanic, The Mask

of Zorro. Our grandfather, purblind and waiting  

for the Kingdom of God, sat on a throne in his dark 

room, translating Dante.  

The Galileo space probe revealed

there was an entire ocean hiding beneath a sheet  

of ice in Jupiter's moon. 

 The Yangtze River in China lost its nerve 

 and wanted vengeance.

Elsewhere a desert caught fire.  

We got a plastic green turtle and named it Sir  

Desmond Tutu. 

A snake entered our house through the drain

and like any good son, I ran  

and hid under the bed. 

Google became a thing.  

Viagra became a thing.     

In July, it flooded at night and a wind nearly 

 tore off our roof. I thought God is so in love with us, 

 he wants to fill us with himself. 

My mother, I saw her through a slit in the door, a glimpse 

 of amaranth-red scarf and swirling yellow skirt. 

 She thought no one was looking. She was dancing in a trance 

 to Fela Kuti. She laughed and clapped 

at the mirror. It was the year our house 

became a house of boys and girls, and a ghost, our little sister.  

Calmaria. That's what the Portuguese called it. When it rained  

and the world was suddenly becalmed, we would run

and peel out of the door, waving at the aurora  

of birds flitting past in the sky.  

We knew one of them, the little one, used to be one of us,  

those spectral white egrets.  

 

--Gbenga Adesina   

Kin: First Responders

 

^{On August 2, 2010, siblings and cousins Takeitha Warner, 13; JaMarcus Warner, 14; JaTavious Warner, 17; Litrelle Stewart, 18; LaDarius Stewart, 17; and Latevin Stewart, 15, drowned in the Red River in Shreveport, Louisiana in attempt to save DeKendrix Warner, 15, who was rescued.}

One of they own was down in the belly of the river, so The Six dove and flew, neither flippered nor winged, as if air could hold them, as if riverwater was sweet.

The children believed in miracles, believed they was miracles, believed life was not life without they people.

Somebody said they was searching for stars but looked down into them waves. The stars they perceived was brother, sister, cousin, each eye shining with rivermud studded with gemstone, each mouth open and gleaming with tooth, gold, child-holler. 

So, they did what humans do when they fall in love: fall. Flung they bodies in full panic, full surrender, one after another after another after another after another, one behind the other, into riverwater—We blood in life, blood in death, ain’t we, Blood?—drowned as one sound. 

Water was neither translucent nor transparent, which means not one could read their futures, which were dying as they dove, dying as their limbs did not heed the love-command of they individual hearts to stroke and live, stroke and live, but stroke they did, stroke they did.

Ingested riverwater
like shine—mud, sediment, sludge—
they blues turned mouth,
part holy, part tomb:

Kin, when you go, I go.
We bout to die soon.

 

--Tameka Cage Conley

Capricho #37

Capricho #53

Capricho #50

 

Capricho #43

 

Once and Future

We painted dawn into midnight  
Out of cement ceilings  
we made skylights  
From gravel, we crafted fine and delicate chandeliers  
hung them with fishing line  
so they appeared to float in midair  
We turned copper piping into rings  
Venus circling our fingers  
the oxidation turned our digits green  
our limbs transforming  
into ferns and orchids  
We breathed and our condensation  
Created clouds  
Our tears fed the sea  
We prayed to all the living things 
We sat in silence with the trees  
Our feet rooting into the ground  
To touch the highest energy  
The evergreens and us  
We breathed in tandem  
And inside our lungs  
Sprung a forest of veins  
Mimicking their cousins’ limbs  
We sprouted two intricate flowers  
In our minds 
For the left and right hemispheres  
And we hung our thoughts there  
Believing that the petals would keep them safely tucked away  
We recognized ourselves 
Didn’t need mirrors to see our likeness  
Even the dirt felt like us  
The sand, our bones in a trillion pieces 
We walked atop these beaches
Sinking in, their legacy holding us 
There was silence  
and we were not afraid  
There was peace  
And we were not anxious 
There was a world  
We did not conquer 

--Desdamona

Though from Here I Can’t Smell the Smoke

 

In medieval frescoes haloed saints are edged in flame 
when God is around,
melting like a rumor
to the corners of a room,
giving off heat. Tulip-tipped, sky-bright. 

These days, they name fires like saints:

Willow, Glass, Dixie, August, Wolf,
Live Oak, Snow, Point, Camp, Creek. I’m feeling thermal

as my home state burns 
up another set of firsts.

I watch footage on repeat:

embers fly, jump highways, scrape
life from gnarled hillsides. Soot
in the atmosphere. Viewable

from space. I turn
the volume up: interference on the microphone, ash-colored, this pitch
of burning, this tunnel
funneling waves—

The glowing perimeter thrums, widens.
Rim of the world, smoldering.

Where did my edges go?
What holds
head to neck, hand to fingers,
brain to sickness?
I can feel the stitches lift—

The flame stalks, flowers 
up, and eats

now stands of trees, now scrub
and mountain underbrush. The sky
gauzes with smoke

and air
that rustles—spark and sear
of holy cellophane. 

 

 --Allison Hutchcraft

Missing the Farm

Here's the orchard someone else will tend to.
And the crawl space beneath the porch
of the house where someone else's barn cat
will slumber through the summer nights
dreaming of long-tailed mice in the high grass.
Over that field, the light dips and refracts
through the broken glass of the muck pond
where a catfish will take someone else's bait
and hook—that it might meet the refined
heat of a skillet. The ghosts of a thousand
head of cattle walk through the woods at night
in someone else's dream while the windows,
cracked slightly, let a mild breeze pass
through the empty rooms like an appraiser.
There is no death that cannot be undone
by simply turning the compost with a pitchfork
or by scattering scratch in the dirt for chickens
who sing each time they lay, but every repair
is only a gesture against the torment of slow
winds and steady rain and heavy sun. It will be
someone else who grows too old to climb
the ladder into the barn's cool loft or the flight
of stairs that lead to and from their own bed.
It will be their hand weighing the mortgage.
It will be their face forgetting its smile. Listen,
if the well pump kicks to life at dawn, it will be
someone else drawing a bath for the last time—
joints relaxing as their form submerges, body
recovering and failing in the same held breath.  

--Travis Mossotti

Two Poems

 
 I wiped the last men from my shelves

I didn't know I was already done with
              gathering unto

jackets and books and even an aroma
I dragged across the century

collecting dust and some tacky film
trinkets of a life            I threw away

everything I had and knew
and even some of the things I liked

but oh I could never throw
away a thing I love

nothing I have loved
has been that light

 

          * * *

I do so love a sad red barn

the lassitude of a bar
of soap

                empty pat
of butter on the stair

a lasting warm remark

like a country mouse
with its tail in its mouth

I fall asleep in the field
with my hand around my throat

to suffer lilies alone
confusing my own smell

for the pasture

 

--Stella Corso

9th and 2nd

I’m alive you say
to no one in particular.

You are no one in particular.
That’s a good thing. The street is filled with souls

nested in good-looking bodies
that aren’t looking

in your direction. Someone is singing,
someone’s holding hands

with someone who is embarrassed by affection,
men and women made of light

drink in light
made of men and women.

They are alive you say,
meaning no one in particular.

One of them is singing, one is selling flowers,
one is so thin

you can almost see through her. One is looking
in your direction.

I’m alive you say, a little embarrassed
to be no one in particular, a soul

nested in a body
of men and women.

Someone is singing, someone is drinking
tea that is sweet and bitter.

It’s a good thing you say,
drinking in the light

of men and women,
men and women made of light, nested

in the sweet and bitter. A soul
is singing in your direction, so alive

you can almost see her.

--Joy Ladin