You work. You work, Buddy. You
work.
Word of immigrant get-ahead grind
I hear
huffing through me, my
grandfather?s breath,
when he?d come in from Saturday?s
keep-busy chores,
fending up a calloused hand to
stop
me from helping him, haggard
cheeks puffing
out like grey t-shirts hung
between tenements,
doubled-over under thirty-five
years a machine
repairman at the ball-bearing
factory, ball-bearings
making everything run smoother ?
especially torpedoes. He busted
butt
for the war effort, for
profiteers, for overtime pay
down-payment on a little box of
his own,
himself a refugee from the
European economy,
washed ashore after The War to
End All Wars.
Cheap labor for the winners.
I hear his youth plodding through
the hayfields
above Srednevas, and the train
that wheezed
and lumbered to the Trieste, the
boat where he heave-hoed
consumptive sister,
one-two-overboard.
I hear him scuffling along factory
smoke choked streets
of Cleveland, coughing out chunks
of broken
English just to make it to
Saturday morning balinca ?
how he grunted off a week?s worth
of grit
hurling wooden balls down the
pressed dirt court,
sweaty wisp of gray hair wagging
from his forehead,
This is how the world turns. You
work hard. You practice.
And I hear his claim as we climbed
the steps
of Municipal Stadium, higher, into
the cheap seats,
slapping the flat of his hand
against a girder,
I built this, Buddy. I built
this.
But mostly I hear how he?d catch
what was left of his breath after
those Saturday chores,
pouring out that one, long, tall
cold beer
that Grandma allowed, holding it
aloft,
bubbles golden as hayfields above
Srednavas,
before savoring it down and taking
up
the last task of his day off ?
cleaning the cage,
letting Snowball, canary
like the ones once used
to test coal mines for poison air,
flap clumsily free
around the living room, crapping
on the plastic covered davenport
and easy-chair
they only sat in twice a year.
And I?m still breathing,
Grandfather, that day
you took me down the basement to
the cool floor
to find out what was wrong.
Come on, Snowball,
fly. Fly!
The bird splayed out on the same
linoleum
where they found you, next to your
iron lung,
where Grandma mopped for weeks
after,
pointing with arthritic fingers,
See. There.
There?s where he fell and bumped
his head.
See the specks of blood?
She can?t work out.
One fine morning when my work is
done
I?m gonna fly away home, fly away
home.
Come on, Snowball, fly. Fly?
from Bone Orchard Conga,
BOOKS
O Say Can You See
O say can you see
this country free
of bigotry, hostility,
incivility
from sea to shining tv?
The tribes are picking up
sides
from Ferguson to Charlotte
from Minneapolis to Cleveland
and there?s nowhere left to
hide
for the children of the dream
walking hand in hand
down the black and white
wound
running across this land.
What?s wrong with this
picture?
Can you find the human
being beaten on this screen?
Being beaten on that screen?
He deserved it. ?Payback happens.?
What goes around, comes
around,
said the eye for an eye blind
men.
But the rioting is on the
wall.
?Mr. President, you have a
call
on the white courtesy phone.?
It?s the BLANKS? fault. The
BLANKS
started it. You know how
they are.
They don?t really belong
here.
So we sell ourselves on talk
shows
like bugs shaken in a jar.
And the finger of blame
points around
in an angry trigger circle.
We?re all living in the same
hood now,
buying into Babylonian hype.
Mad. Ave. went to bed with
Holly Would
and raised a little family of
stereotypes.
Say, hey can you see
somebody who looks
just
like me
somebody who looks just
like you,
peering out from the leaves
of our family tree
rooted in Mother Africa?
We are the children of the
dream
who wandered our separate
ways
along time gone, gathered
together
here again today. Remember?
Can we call ourselves
brothers and sisters?
What color was the hand
Cain raised against Abel
after it fell? How will we
ever
wipe the slate clean
when the powers that be
sell us whitewash and
blackball
so we can paint ourselves
into our own corners,
the mirrors of our monsters?
Can you see the eyes
of a sister, a brother,
a mother, a father
behind the masks
of your worst nightmares?
O say can you see
through the lies
that we are not us?
That we are us versus?
And where is Justice?
Or is it just us?
We are the children of the
dream
wandering the desert of
America
through the smokescreen
from the fire next time come
home,
walking hand in hand
down the black and white
wound
running across this land
healed over with each
step
together and together again.
O say can you see the person
walking next to you now?
Tasting What of the Sun We Can
At the end of summer the last
of the tall grass stems yellow and hollow.
Rafts of ironweed and goldenrod
cluster over the field, and we both
recite their names, assuring each other.
We pick bristleberries that absorbed
their fill of the sun's pulses
and smash them between roof and tongue,
tasting what of the sun we can.
We spit - ripe is a day sooner than rotten.
I snap a black, fallen branch open
and smell the inside's incense
and hold the cherrywood out to you.
You draw in, then exhale, nodding good,
agreeing to what is passing.
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