The Apostrophe Blog
Photo by Fquasie
My poem, “In the Kingdom of Perpetual Night” was published in Scintilla Magazine’s Issue #10, Winter 2016. The poem’s title elides into the first line of its opening stanza:
where all their lost, original songs
squeeze the bellows of death,
sing with mouths of sun & flint
such lullabies of dread
This poem is dedicated to The Mothers of the Movement, a group founded by women whose African American children have been murdered by gun violence or police officers. In it, I tried my best to bear witness to the agony and grief they all forever live with. I, of course, failed. Because their losses remain unimaginable, unfathomable, unforgivable. How did this become the world that we inhabit? What brave, brave women they are.
In the Kingdom of Perpetual Night
for The Mothers of the Movementwhere all their lost, original songs
squeeze the bellows of death,
sing with mouths of sun & flint
such lullabies of dread
emptying to arch, wind & spit,
to baptize these dark waters
blood, to mustard as poultice—
more broken bodies, trashed.
Human pain is no consolation
for beaten skin, for love notes
written in bullet or noose. How many
tears until you wish to return
as a silk corsage, as a shimmer
from that feral, unfamiliar perch—
each mourn that incapacitates,
splits into an infinitive of flight?
No ordinary, dime-a-dozen
women: too many
mothers, keening into the canopy
after their babies long-fledged,
whose branches offer filtered
light until the fogbank hits the straits
of grief. You might shake.
I might send my words
into battle with the air.
To know their extraordinary glory,
how momentous it is to speak
aloud.
Their names.
Too swift
gone
& now?
Each aria, a gasp.
Interests: Reading, writing, not arithmetic. The art and craft of poetry. Photography. Vegetable and flower gardening especially heirloom bulbs and dahlias. Movies in real theatres. Theatre on real stages. Art in real galleries. Crossword puzzles and, of course, Wordle. Singer-songwriters like Aimee Mann and Patti Griffin. All kinds of music especially 1930s jazz. Venice, Italy! The Dude abides.
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