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Michael Salcman

THE NIGHT BEFORE

The ex-husbands were the worst; not one showed up
to discuss whether a wife’s head should be shaved
the night before or asleep on the table.
Ex-girlfriends and wives were better, always there
to stake out their territory and proclaim undying devotion.
A patient’s room the night before was like a temple
a moment before the service starts, everyone chatting
and catching up, the pews in front of the Ark
filled with noise, the children of blended families
forced to attend, in loud debate
about what should be done. Each of them had their reasons:
father was much too young or old to get the new drug,
he was otherwise healthy, his heart was strong,
if he knew he would fight to the end or
he wouldn’t want to live as less than a man.
Like this they broke into camps, some still wishing
to keep up the fight by another attack on the tumor,
others in favor of (usually unsaid) adjusting the respirator
and pulling the plug. Unless the man in the bed was deep in coma
or paralyzed by drugs, we took it outside to the hall
and made our decision in that outer courtyard of the temple
where nurses walk their silent carts
and monitors wink like distant stars.
I stepped just far enough away he wouldn’t hear them trembling
to know what I would do in the morning.
Even if he never spoke, I always assumed he listened.

–from Rattle #31, Summer 2009

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L. Lamar Wilson

DREAMBOYS

My nephew waltzes beside his father,
The man who was the boy who made Faggot!
A reason not to flinch. His neck a merry-

Go-round, our boy rears back, waves
His pointer in my face, jabs his other fist
Into his hip & wails: Watch yo’ mouth!

Watch yo’ mouth, Miss Effie White! ’Cause I
Don’t take no mess from no second-rate diva
Who can’t sustain! In my brother’s eyes, I see

The pain of remembering when I crooned—Don’t
Tell me not to live. Just sit & putter. Life’s candy
& the sun’s a ball of butter—& made him grimace.

I scan the wall of plaques in Mama’s den,
The remnants of home runs & aces that gave
Him hope then, all dusty now. Teeth clenched,

He smiles at his dreamboy & nods in disbelief.
Harrumphs. Lashes flittering, he offers me
The only penance he can: a sheepish grin.

We applaud & feign heartened laughter.
My nephew sees beyond the veil shrouding
His father’s eyes. Realizes this isn’t

How brown boys win favor. Searches
My eyes for answers. Mirrors
A sadness no song can shake.

–from Rattle #31, Summer 2009
Tribute to African American Poets

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Marcus Wicker

SELF DIALOGUE READING ETHERIDGE KNIGHT

Where’s your voice at, Marcus?
Really. When you die, will they find a notebook filled with one long poem
Tucked beneath a fluffy little pillow? Will it start: Eh yo, fuck the sonnet.
Fuck everything you’ve ever written that don’t sound like a chain gang
Clanking shackles against a railroad track. Fuck words that don’t feel
Like pick-a-switch-welts. No, fuck that—like the bone up under them welts.
Fuck lines that don’t look like family tree stumps & every poem
That don’t taste like a bullet proof vest: like using the word “nigga”
As every motherfucking part of speech. Are you a poet or black man first?
Is there a difference? You wonder who would have the nerve to ask
Etheridge. Who would need to. & are the answers the belly of this poem.
You hope this poem is a cracked prison cell, & not a fluffy little pillow.
Still, they are the same sad thing. You know they are the same.

–from Rattle #31, Summer 2009
Tribute to African American Poets

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Ian Williams

HERO

                                                        The hero wins
because that’s what heroes do when you spend
the money to buy the DVD of a movie you already
know the ending to, not because you’ve seen it before
but because you heard from a colleague in HR
that it’ll make you feel real good after,
it was the best thing she’s seen lately, and that’s
with her being married and every morning pushing spoons
into the faces of her two children
                                                            so you watch it
knowing the only thing that will make you feel good
this evening is seeing a bare-chested man wail on another
in a ring and another in a street and another in a ring
in slow mo and the dff dff sounds of the gloves striking
bodies in movies, which don’t sound like bodies for real,
not that you’d admit to knowing that,
                                                                and the hero
doesn’t even look like heroes in the real world
which are not the heroes in grade four essays either
but this one time—stay with me—you dropped by a woman’s place
and you were sitting at her kitchen table and she asked you
if you wanted anything to drink and she opened the fridge
and you saw through the crack between her body
and the door only a pitcher of water on the wire shelf
in the yellow light—you want to call her a hero
because she’s surviving with her mouth shut
or yourself because you’re so affected must mean
you’re noble. Go ahead. But there are other words
for you two.

–from Rattle #31, Summer 2009
Tribute to African American Poets

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Katie Kingston

HISTORY OF MY BODY

Once this body went into treason. The flat-chested girl
pushed Willie Wall into the thorn bush, and never
stopped riding her pogo stick up and down the driveway
until her brother broke it. The history of this body
is the angel in snow working her arms and legs in long
slashes. The history of this body is like breaking up
a jigsaw puzzle, then letting the pieces float in the river.
Have I told you I am the hero of this body? I’m as
fluid as water spilling into the boat. I could save you,
but first, you have to almost drown. Once a mosquito
laid botfly eggs in this thigh. Hatchlings trekked
pink stripes across my skin, newborn veins radiating
from the mother egg. The history of this body has a fly
in its ear, buzz radiating like geometric lace. Take
this history back to the tonsillectomy, back to ice cream
in its swollen throat, back to the way these lips enter
a room full of men. Take this ear, a barrage of spider veins
trapping sound. History of my body is about inhaling
secondary smoke from my father’s cigar, inhaling primary
perfume from my mother’s neck, inhaling the broken
leaves of autumn crushed beneath my boot, that pile
of miniscule hands prying at the lawn, until I sweep them
into a heap and plow through them like a sorceress
with conical hat and faithful broom. The body remembers
trick-or-treat, its Snickers bars and bruised apples.
This body remembers the way dried leaves scratch the skin
when I somersault into the pile of tattooed veins: oak,
elm, maple, then wrap myself in a sarong of silver water.
Inside this body, flies buzz, this body with cake on its tongue.

–from Rattle #31, Summer 2009