Memories: vicious

like a thicket made hot

with cobras. The wrong step

or an erroneous beat

of the heart
and I could turn
into a tower bursting with death.

Legends tell the tourists

that spectres roam this city

but I’ve no need of tales

to explain

the red-eyed shadows

hopping like squirrels

through the greenless branches

of my immediate apprehension.

I remember when they died.

Stand amazed, now,

watching them haunt

reflections of their former lives.
 

The tourists hear one story

but let me tell you another:

like the one about WillieMae

who had 14 children, 9 they say

still living,  just like she is

a blackwoman working split shifts

at what used to be the old

Desoto Hilton Hotel.

14 children, 9 still living

spanking, feeding, loving her brood

in-between preparing pastries

for people who’d rather not know.

But her story contains no irony

the husband died a death that was actual

and non-literary, her southern blackwoman's

life failed to reflect

the bohemian aesthetics of drag queens,

singers, and polka-dotted eccentrics

that made John Berendt’s garden party

glow so lusciously with decadence.

I could tell the story

of that scar, on WillieMae’s right leg

where police dogs

attacked like Klansmen

because she insisted that her children

laugh like anybody’s children

in the sun-caressed green of Forsyth Park.

But that history has not been preserved

like the architectural jewels

that adorn a shameless hypocrisy.

Nor has it been dramatized

at festivals or parades

stirring up the ghosts on River Street.

Nor immortalized

by a Ray Ellis watercolor

or a statue in the center of a square.

We could even flip this coin

of WillieMae’s tale

and recite the parable of how

she fed an entire neighborhood

with one fried chicken

and Jesus came back just to tell her

“WillieMae you did my recipe proud.

Hear what I  say girl?

You did my recipe proud.”
 

Shall we speak of that woman’s biography

like a hidden chapter of this city’s life

or shall we simply point

at a stupid little Hitch Village boy

feet covered with red dirt

and blackberry stains,

snot flowing like panic and river water,

some curious doctor's fingers

lost between his thighs

his dreams containing just enough genius

to save his mystified ass

from everything except

the slow knowledge of why

certain days stink putrid with agony.

Memories: vicious like a thicket

burning hot with cobras.

The wrong step

or an erroneous beat of the heart

and a man like me

could turn into a tower stinking with death.

(from I Made My Boy Out of Poetry)

by  Aberjhani