Off Katama the Atlantic
was sparkling like Wampanoag
turquoise.
Under a crystal sun
I watched my skin turn
to copper, my lips to plums.
She is still an enigma
to me after nineteen years
the woman who comes to the beach
wearing a new bathing suit
of lemon cream but does not enter
the minty waters.
She wants only to read
Mary Higgins Clark on a blanket
woven of sky and sunshowers
and to hear her mantra sung
by surf and sand. I fell in
love with her all over again.
How Many Times Do I Tell Y'all? Delonta Ain't Here!
Two-thirty in the morning they call.
"Is Delonta there? Have you seen Delonta?"
"No, I ain’t seen no Delonta."
It’s early afternoon now. She can hardly
get anything done in the narrow duplex
mashed between two others just like it.
The cinder block walls are painted pale green.
She is on her knees cleaning out the kitchen
cabinet, the one under the sink, where pots
and pans stand in a tottering tower.
Amid the music of dented tin, they come
knocking, "Is Delonta here?"
"You know what? Y’all about some ignorant
somebodies. I told y’all Delonta ain’t here."
A bouquet of plastic flowers, some missing
bulbs, graces a scar-pocked coffee table.
A black belt coils like a snake. A beeper
attached is hissing.
She frowns up her face as if suddenly she
got a whiff of some smelly thing. With one
hand still clutching a pot by its stem
she leans over and shuts the stupid thing off
then goes back to her pots-and-pans music.
A door in the adjoining hallway slowly opens.
A spindly figure in boxers and bow legs
bounces off the door frame while rubbing his eyes.
"Grandma, can you fix me some eggs?"
"Look, Delonta, I ain’t nobody’s
slave. Fix your own self some eggs."
A Good Day in a Bad Neighborhood
Spring had come early. Even the gray
streets responded, trying to shake
off the layers of salt and dust.
A carnival was underway in the shabby
brick stores stuck together in a row.
They blinked their iron-barred eyes
in the hybrid sunlight.
Doing steady trade, three dollars
at a time. A pack of cigarettes
a beer and a pickle, a bag of chips
a loaf of bread, a can of mackerel.
Shorts in pneumonia weather and drab
legs marched up the afternoon hill
and sat on stoops that winter had
recently occupied.
You could hear the music of shining
cars that flew too fast, like jacamar
and toucan birds trying to attract
a mate.
Hungry kids in dingy tops traveled
in a pack singing the latest hits
and lifting their long arms into
the air swollen with pollen and dogwood
making it across the neglected asphalt
just ahead of oncoming traffic.
You could almost smell the lotus
and mango trees. It was as if
something had broken free after being
held back for so long.
The goddess of hope had briefly
and accidentally made her way here.
