506 History and politics poems

The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams, The nearly invisible stitches along the collar Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians Gossiping over tea and noodles on their break Or talking money or politics while one fitted This armpiece with its overseam to the band Of cuff I button at my wrist. The presser, the cutter, The wringer, the mangle. The needle, the union, The treadle, the bobbin. The code. The infamous blaze At the Triangle Factory in nineteen-eleven. One hundred and forty-six died in the flames On the ninth floor, no hydrants, no fire escapes— The witness in a building across the street Who watched how a young man helped a girl to step Up to the windowsill, then held her out Away from the masonry wall and let her drop. And then another. As if he were helping them up To enter a streetcar, and not eternity. A third before he dropped her put her arms Around his neck and kissed him. Then he held Her into space, and dropped her. Almost at once He stepped to the sill himself, his jacket flared And fluttered up from his shirt as he came down, Air filling up the legs of his gray trousers— Like Hart Crane’s Bedlamite, “shrill shirt ballooning.” Wonderful how the pattern matches perfectly Across the placket and over the twin bar-tacked Corners of both pockets, like a strict rhyme Or a major chord.   Prints, plaids, checks, Houndstooth, Tattersall, Madras. The clan tartans Invented by mill-owners inspired by the hoax of Ossian, To control their savage Scottish workers, tamed By a fabricated heraldry: MacGregor, Bailey, MacMartin. The kilt, devised for workers To wear among the dusty clattering looms. Weavers, carders, spinners. The loader, The docker, the navvy. The planter, the picker, the sorter Sweating at her machine in a litter of cotton As slaves in calico headrags sweated in fields: George Herbert, your descendant is a Black Lady in South Carolina, her name is Irma And she inspected my shirt. Its color and fit And feel and its clean smell have satisfied Both her and me. We have culled its cost and quality Down to the buttons of simulated bone, The buttonholes, the sizing, the facing, the characters Printed in black on neckband and tail. The shape, The label, the labor, the color, the shade. The shirt.

i want to talk about haiti. how the earth had to break the island’s spine to wake the world up to her screaming. how this post-earthquake crisis is not natural or supernatural. i want to talk about disasters. how men make them with embargoes, exploitation, stigma, sabotage, scalding debt and cold shoulders. talk centuries of political corruption so commonplace it's lukewarm, tap. talk january 1, 1804 and how it shed life. talk 1937 and how it bled death. talk 1964.  1986.  1991.  2004.  2008. how history is the word that makes today uneven, possible. talk new orleans, palestine, sri lanka, the bronx and other points or connection. talk resilience and miracles. how haitian elders sing in time to their grumbling bellies and stubborn hearts. how after weeks under the rubble, a baby is pulled out, awake, dehydrated, adorable, telling stories with old-soul eyes. how many more are still buried, breathing, praying and waiting? intact despite the veil of fear and dust coating their bruised faces? i want to talk about our irreversible dead. the artists, the activists, the spiritual leaders, the family members, the friends, the merchants the outcasts, the cons. all of them, my newest ancestors, all of them, hovering now, watching our collective response, keeping score, making bets. i want to talk about money. how one man's recession might be another man's unachievable reality. how unfair that is. how i see a haitian woman’s face every time i look down at a hot meal, slip into my bed, take a sip of water, show mercy to a mirror. how if my parents had made different decisions three decades ago, it could have been my arm sticking out of a mass grave i want to talk about gratitude. i want to talk about compassion. i want to talk about respect. how even the desperate deserve it. how haitians sometimes greet each other with the two words “honor” and “respect.” how we all should follow suit. try every time you hear the word “victim,” you think “honor.” try every time you hear the tag “john doe,” you shout “respect!” because my people have names. because my people have nerve. because my people are your people in disguise i want to talk about haiti. i always talk about haiti. my mouth quaking with her love, complexity, honor and respect. come sit, come stand, come cry with me. talk. there’s much to say. walk. much more to do.

I Also reputed to be golden, Quivira: Cibola, unknown to Coronado, meant ‘buffalo’ to the Indians, but onward, to El Dorado, ‘The Gilded One’, a country where boats were incrusted with gold, where golden bells hung from trees (tho the food there, said to be served on gold, was buffalo). ‘We took the hump from both sides of the hump ribs, of all the carcasses.  In taking out the hump we inserted the knife at the coupling of the loin, cutting forward down the lower side, as far forward as the perpendicular ribs ran; then, starting at the loin again, would cut down the upper side, thus taking out a strip from a full-grown animal about three feet long.  Near the front of the hump ribs it would be ten or twelve inches wide & four or five inches thick.  When first taken out it was hung up for a couple of days with the big end down.  It became shrunken, tender & brittle, with no taint.  The front end had a streak of lean alternating with fat & when fried in tallow, made a feast for the gods’. The prairie soil was ‘black & fat’ &, according to Castaneda, the marrow of the land. On that soil, later to be stripped for prairie sod-houses, wild turkeys flocked among the persimmons their flesh succulent from golden sand plums, bitter with china-berries. The coyotes, their eyes aglow on the dark horizon, barked at a moon above the lowing of buffalo, heard twenty miles away. And cottonwood trees, from whose buds the Indians made clear yellow, scattered their drift in spring filling the gullies. The Quivirans were to tell Coranado ‘the things where you are now are of great importance’. II As Coronado turned to retrace his steps, the Smoky Hills were visible north across a stream enveloped in an atmospheric haze in which the hills became distant, impossible mountains— ‘where you are now’ the Indians had said, ‘of great importance’. The country they traveled over was so level, if one looked at the buffalo the sky could be seen between their legs, so that at a distance they appeared to be smooth-trunked pines whose tops jointed— & if there was one bull, it seemed four pines. The country was round, as if a man should imagine himself in a bowl, & could see sky at its edge an arrow’s shot away. And if any man were to lie down on his back, he lost sight of the ground. Did Coronado see also in that late summer storm, before he turned south, an horizon of dark funnels tapering toward the earth, coming with the thunderous sound of a buffalo herd out of the plains—a calm & sulphurous air in which clouds were drawn like lightning toward the funnels— scattering his men to hide among grassy hollows? A tornado against the sky like buffalo who were beared as goats, with the hump of a camel, the mane of a lion & who carried their tails erect as they ran, like any European scorpion. O Coronado, all country is round to those who lose sight of the ground. Canceas, Cansez, Kansies, Konza: the Indian word meaning smoky, from an atmospheric condition in the fall of the year, called Indian Summer: smoke in the air, in Quivira.

“It isn’t a game for girls,” he said, grabbing a fifth with his right hand, the wind with his left. “For six days I raced Jack Daniels. He cheated, told jokes. Some weren’t even funny. That’s how come he won. It took a long time to reach this Yellow River. I’m not yet thirty, or is it thirty-one? Figured all my years carried the same hard thaw. Out here, houselights hid deep inside the trees. For awhile I believed this road cut across to Spring Creek and I was trucking home. I could kid you now, say I ran it clean, gasping on one lung, loaded by a knapsack of distrust and hesitation. I never got the tone in all the talk of cure. I sang Honor Songs, crawled the railroad bridge to Canada. Dizzy from the ties, I hung between both worlds. Clans of blackbirds circled the nearby maple trees. The dark heart of me said no days more than these. As sundown kindled the sumacs, stunned by the river’s smile, I had no need for heat, no need to feel ashamed. Inside me then the sound of burning leaves. Tell them I tumbled through a gap on the horizon. No, say I stumbled through a hummock and fell in a pit of stars. When rain weakened my stride, I heard them singing in a burl of white ash, took a few more days to rave at them in this wood. Then their appaloosas nickered in the dawn and they came riding down a close ravine. Though the bottle was empty, I still hung on. Foxtails beat the grimace from my brow until I took off my pain like a pair of old boots. I became a hollow horn filled with rain, reflecting everything. The wind in my hand burned cold as hoarfrost when my grandfather nudged me and called out my Lakota name.” In memory of Mato Heholgeca’s grandson

—Independence Day Celebration 2011, Dhaka i. In a courtyard, in these stacks of chairs before the empty stage—near are we Lord, near and graspable. Lord, accept these humble offerings: stacks of biscuits wrapped in cellophane, stacks of bone in glass: thighbone, spine. Stacks of white saucers, porcelain circles into which stacks of lip-worn cups slide neat. Jawbone, Lord. Galleries of laminated clippings declaring war. Hands unstack chairs into rows.The dead: they still go begging.

This old house lodges no ghosts! Those swaggering specters who found their way Across the Atlantic Were left behind With their old European grudges In the farmhouses of New England And Pennsylvania Like so much jettisoned baggage Too heavy To lug over the Piedmont. The flatlands are inhospitable To phantoms. Here Shadows are sharp and arbitrary Not mazy, obscure, Cowering in corners Behind scary old boots in a cupboard Or muffled in empty coats, deserted By long-dead cousins (Who appear now and then But only in photographs Already rusting at the edges)— Setting out in the creaking wagon Tight-lipped, alert to move on, The old settlers had no room For illusions. Their dangers were real. Now in the spare square house Their great-grandchildren Tidy away the past Until the polished surfaces Reflect not apparitions, pinched, Parched, craving, unsatisfied, But only their own faces.

Even the flags seemed frozen to their poles, and the men stamping their well-shod feet resembled an army of overcoats. But we were young and fueled by hope, our ardor burned away the cold. We were the president’s, and briefly the president would be ours. The old poet stumbled over his own indelible words, his breath a wreath around his face: a kind of prophecy.

For whom the possessed sea littered, on both shores, Ruinous arms; being fired, and for good, To sound the constitution of just wars, Men, in their eloquent fashion, understood. Relieved of soul, the dropping-back of dust, Their usage, pride, admitted within doors; At home, under caved chantries, set in trust, With well-dressed alabaster and proved spurs They lie; they lie; secure in the decay Of blood, blood-marks, crowns hacked and coveted, Before the scouring fires of trial-day Alight on men; before sleeked groin, gored head, Budge through the clay and gravel, and the sea Across daubed rock evacuates its dead.

The strident high civic trumpeting of misrule. It is what we stand for. Wild insolence, aggregates without distinction. Courage of common men: spent in the ruck their remnant witness after centuries is granted them like a pardon. And other fealties other fortitudes broken as named— Respublica brokenly recalled, its archaic laws and hymnody; and destroyed hope that so many times is brought with triumph back from the dead.

When Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s defeat over national radio, his divinity was broken, fell away and settled in fine gold dust at his feet. His people understood the gravity of the occasion—a god does not speak over the airwaves with a human voice, ordinary and flecked with static. A god does not speak in the common voice of the earthbound, thick with shame. At the station, my mother, a schoolgirl, looked on as men in uniform lurched from the platform into the path of incoming trains, their slack bodies landing on the tracks without sound.