Aubade: West

Ferguson, Missouri

Everywhere absence mocks me:

Jimmy, jettisoned like rotten fruit.

Franklin blown away.

Heat aplenty of all kinds,

especially when August blows its horn—

cops and summer and no ventilation

make piss-poor running buddies.

A day just like all the others,

me out here on the streets

skittery as a bug crossing a skillet,

no lungs big enough to strain

this scalded broth into brain and tissues,

plump my arteries, my soul . . .

Voice in my ear hissing Go ahead, leave.

Look around. No gates, no barbed wire.

As if I could walk on water.

As if water ever told one good truth,

lisping her lullabies as she rocks

another cracked cradle of Somalis

until it splits and she can pour

her final solution right through.

Me watching from the other side of the world,

high and dry on this street

running straight as a line of smack,

sun shouting down its glory:

No one’s stopping you.

What are you waiting for?

Ghettoland: Exeunt

follow the morning star

Tell yourself it’s only a sliver of sun

burning into your chest, a cap of gold

or radiant halo justly worn by

the righteous at heart—

then take it off, stomp it, rip out the seams.

Wherever a wall goes up, it smolders.

Gate or street corner, buried canal—

you’ll catch yourself before crossing,

stumble over perfectly flat stones,

skirt the worn curb to avoid a cart

rumbling past three centuries ago.

You stop to gaze up at the softening sky

because there is nowhere else to look

without remembering pity and contempt,

without harboring rage.

Sketch for Terezín

breathe in breathe out
that's the way

in out
left right

where did we leave from?
when do we stop leaving?

*

This far west, summer nights cool off
but stay light, blue-stung,
long after sleep lowers its merciful hammer.

*

breathe left
breathe right

one two
in out

*

There will be music and ice cream
and porcelain sinks.
Carts of bread for the looking;
choirs and gymnastics.

I get to carry the banner.

*

that's the way keep it up
in out in out

where did we leave from
when did we stop leaving

*

I was a girl when I arrived,
carrying two pots
from my mother's kitchen.
It was October, growing crisp,
my sweater soft as cream cakes,
my braid blonder than the star
stitched across my heart.

*

breathe breathe
that's the way

left right left
right left right

*

no one asks what village I’m from
though I look out from its leaf-green eyes

no one asks if I remember how the butterflies
startled, churning up lemony clouds

no one else hears the river chafing its banks
the one road singing its promises
going out

*

when did we leave from
where did we stop leaving

*

if I am to become a heavenly body
I would like to be a comet
a streak of spitfire consuming itself
before a child's upturned wonder

Reprinted by permission of Rita Dove from her book Playlist for the Apocalypse, W.W. Norton, New York. © 2021 by Rita Dove