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Jeffery Renard Allen's Poetry
Blood
--for Elijah, my firstborn
Skin holds red host
to virulent world
Air supports the rare body
Self moves out to
surface of skull
to probe danger-probable element
This I should tell
The glassed-in nursery rocks/out-of-tune choir,
tiny nude singers, each in her/his own plexiglass chariot
The mute colors of fresh arrival
Your coiled fists seeded knots of becoming
hiding some promise
Washed in the blood
Your mother pillowed up in her curtained
quarter of the disinfected room
the smell of clean work
the sheen of labor
proud and excessive female form
This too I should tell:
Guniea, Ife, Jefe--some residual land
scape rehearsed on fabric
a rocking porch under starlight storm
fierce listening
springtime leaves on glossy branches
firm boundary line
or some athletic veil turning somersaults on taut laundry cord
Pauses
on an up
draft,
curled wood shaving
--and whatever else is traceable to these sources
No puffed-out winter birds
No jive buzzards or shucking crows
Beaked tribes or razored kin throwing shade
Keep them all away
Days after the storm
I trudge through a world
snug in a sleeve of snow
cramped and filthy sun
Curbside
a van swaddled in white:
Dios es Amor
Odd hand touches odd other,
both translucent with memory, backlit tissue, separate stills no larger than a thumbnail:
Elijah
Nasir
Mekhi
the crest and break of name
radiant waves
acoustical motion
I track glimpses of my father in a black forest where trees
serve as stand-in screens
hide and harbor
Twenty-five years (more) since last sighting
but his face retains its petal shape
(The imagined bird is fainter than the actual,
sought-for movement less substantial than sweat)
Mom says,
"The older you become, the more you look like your father"
Mom says,
"Whenever you open your mouth your father slips through"
Iron Man in my knuckle-headed elegance
Heir to a familiar repertoire of pulsing
deeds, ever-expanding empire, your red universe--
my heart
December 21, 2000 – January 27, 2001