Downtown Austin, TX: Racial Landscape
I THINK YOU KNOW
I think you know, and
please don’t mention it,
the smell of wolf
willow, chokecherry, sweet broom,
of caged children in
foil blankets on cement.
Exhausted women who
can’t nurse their kids
face threats of
deportation back to blood-soaked rooms,
I think you know--but
please don’t mention it.
You practice Handel; I
show you where your bow slid.
That night I hold you,
shivering in your night-dark room,
knowing caged children
sleep in foil blankets on cement.
One young mother begged
all the way to the bridge.
She was thrown into the
river’s gloom.
I think you know, and
please don’t mention it.
At home, you drew your
bow across the bridge.
In camp, they all got
sick from cold and poor food,
the caged children in
foil blankets on cement.
She told the officers
within a week she would be killed.
What were we doing at
that hour, me and you
As caged children slept
in foil blankets on cement?
I think you know, and
please don’t mention it.
HOME SAFETY
The police say put a large pair
of men’s workboots on the front porch
so a thief will think someone lives there
who can kick his ass. Advice
“for the lesbian population.”
Cindy and Deborah’s sliding door
was smashed for the second time.
Tina says her boyfriend
carries flies outside. Tina says
“Where’s the kitchen knife?”
Her boots are small
but angry.
NARROW ROOMS
Their
remembering atones
in no part for
the things they remember.
Muriel Rukeyser
The intake center’s
narrow rooms, St. Mary’s
Legal Social Justice Center,
San Antonio.
“Receive from us a
blessed greeting. We
are women, we are
mothers, we’ve been raped
and tortured and our
children, they don’t eat.”
Spanish speakers needed. Space is limited.
If by our laws these
children must be chained,
let me fly like I once
dreamed I could,
pump my outstretched
arms, rise up and float
out the dirty window.
Let kids grab
my ankles, trail behind
me like a kite’s
tail banking north, a
railroad in the sky.
I am not the
vessel. I am heat
rising from dark
asphalt, being poured.
RAISING WHITE MEN
Here, on the street where
police were called on a black neighbor,
in the week the Ferguson
killer isn’t indicted,
where we lie on the cold
wet sidewalk in protest,
I’m raising white men.
In the week the Ferguson
killer isn’t indicted
(in these poems this I
know: what I reap, I’ll sow),
I’m raising white men.
When I’m dead, I’ll wait
for them in these poems.
In these poems this I
know: what I reap, I’ll sow.
His uncle gives him an
Indian burn, so my youngest cries.
When I’m dead, I’ll wait
for them in these poems.
I twist away to expel the
stink of what I’ve consumed.
My youngest cries when
his uncle gives him an Indian burn
and we lie on the cold
wet sidewalk in protest.
I twist away to expel the
stink of what I’ve consumed
on the street where
police were called on a black neighbor.
NEPHEWS
We have a summer bumper
crop
of nephews. Every bedroom
lined with pallets,
pallets lined
with the bodies of boys.
Henry
and Mark lived on the
streets and heroin
for more than a
year. Henry says
the cravings are still
right here, palm flat
before his face. He doesn’t talk to Mark.
They saved each other’s
lives. They risked
each other’s lives. Nathaniel is the lucky one,
youngest son of the
second husband,
just a little safer. He wants to get into
legal marijuana. His math teacher
tells him it’s the new
Wild West,
opportunity on the slopes
of Bald
Mountain. He says he’s clean. He means
no felonies. He served drinks at our party.
John’s T-shirt says Jesus Loves Muslims.
Ask Me About It. John will marry Gretchen
in two weeks. They can’t live together yet,
so staying with the
lesbian aunts makes sense,
right? Jesus loves us too. He reads his morning
Bible at the table with
our ten-year-old,
who reads Greek myths and
prays each night
that the children in Gaza
may be happy,
healthy and holy. John
says it was hard
to get into Saudi Arabia,
so he went to Jordan.
He says our hospitality’s
Jordanian.
Lisa
L. Moore is
professor of English and Women’s and Gender Studies at The University of Texas
at Austin. Her writing has been awarded
the Lambda Literary Foundation Award, the Choice Outstanding Academic Book
Award, and the Art/Lines Juried Poetry Prize, and recognized as a Split This
Rock Poem of the Week. She is the author
or editor of four scholarly books and her poems have appeared in Anchor Magazine, Ostrich Review, Lavender
Review, and other journals, and anthologies including This Assignment is So Gay (Sibling Rivalry). She is a
member of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers.
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