by Jaki Shelton Green
my children thrive. whether i feed them or not. in this museum of tragedies. smudged handwriting of all your freedom songs. freedom prayers that do not translate into any language. smeared across walls. crawling out of equatorial fog mass. a bloom of tropical air lifts your hair into this dry horizontal wind. inside this house. a wind you deny. we love beneath bedraggled backyard roses. they too hold shadows. sadness in their petals. a slap of razor to the walls. whispering morning sorrow. becoming song for the death of things green. the eroticism of suede. bare sleek wood. glass balls hanging. steel bulbs. is not lost on me. i awaken in the center of the slave girl’s dream. not that one. but this new slave girl. in the center of her winter flower dream. in the center of white clustered petals. inside dark praying palms. fingerprints pressing hard against make believe wedding dress. a bouquet of nettle. primrose. queen anne’s lace. her life barely a whisper. barely a whimper. from the floorboards of an open book. her heart remembers all the flavors of danger. she married them all before in another dream. beneath canopies of thistle lace spread over burial grounds. singing wisteria. one legged sparrow. dagger-toothed womb. sassafras mouth. she married them all. in geeche swamps. moss covered lynching trees. houses built on rooster bones. liquor stills. cotton plants that cry when you touch them. my heart opens in the center of the new slave girl’s dream. where her vows are a shudder of blessed death. stronger than any other light she swallowed before. stronger than this dream dust. i birthed you in april. you were nobody’s apology. nobody’s unadorned table. you made the dying worth living. i am the scribe paid in silver. a shepherd girl. barely old enough to tell her story. she opens my hands. counts the silence. the emptiness inside each space of joint that is dead. breathless. my hands have emptied many wombs. cried for the remembrance of dead babies. lost shepherd girls. my hands now receive all the disguises of everything i have forgotten how to name. how to count. how to love.
Poem copyright 2021 by Jaki Shelton Green. All rights reserved.
See two more poems from Jaki Shelton Green debuted on The Fight & The Fiddle: “The Communion of White Dresses” and “For the lover who eats my poems”
Read more in this issue: Interview | Critical Essay | Writing Prompt