Sunday, April 5, 2015

I35 Creativity Corridor: Lisa Moore, Austin, TX, April 5


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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