Giving Mary Grace
For Mary Turner
History will submit to you | I will too |
Eventually when we are color-pleased | when your dirt speaks |
I will be left | dumb-still |
I won’t refer you back to life |
There’s been enough of that |
I falter | in guilt | at your reanimating |
Now I am trying to unbeast you |
Having walked with myth and imagination |
I thought I counted every stone. The walls |
grew closer |
| I walk in a terrible circle |
Should I quiet my poet, yes |
I wanted to die too, yes |
But concealed that adolescence | like a hymn |
through me |
Through me wasn’t always the answer |
| I am black people |
and am a series of decisions |
Shall I let my again speak for me, no |
Agains stain the clear water |
Can I offer you up to speak, if |
Only if | you are compelled to |
I wasn’t finished with myself, I |
Where story and desire | collide |
with terrible friction |
How full of stories are you, many |