Postcard from Hell

For Etheridge Knight

Everybody’s talking don’t know
a spoonful about bricks & flowers
in fall. Who decides? Who pays?
But it’s always between the lips
Like smack, blood pushes back
the walls in which it flows

I’m walking—round the corner
at Retreat, a man smeared with
oil & grease—open air garage
—between debris of warehouse
fire & boarded house—he’s
making money. Hooded boys
hang near, like cover. Transient.

At Francis, toward Pennsylvania,
is Ay Jay Deli & Store, Ma & Pa
jump on a jet for family & Korea
her sister now behind hard plastic
Ma & Pa knew folks & they
made them family, but they gone

Folks say why don’t they hire
since she can’t speak English
herself, except "Hi Hon-nee"

People searching for work.
Traveling all over the country
Louisiana, all on the compass
men & women moving
or being moved. Working
people push back.

Surviving we go along
That kid lives in a single
family home, new; he the
old third floor apartment, two
rooms, five sleep on roaches
chicken box babies & tv

Last week the church tore down
two buildings for a parking lot.
I declined the deacon’s invitation

Near the end of Retreat, a white
hand-painted garage owned by
Garveyites from Kingston, but
they don’t show they colors

On the side entrances on
white walls in blue uniforms
—grandmothers, women who’ve
had their running round, pushing
up generations of neglect & terror

They sit on the stoops, the steps
cooling from that hot laundry
July afternoons—food stamps
& hand-me downs
wring their hands & hush a cry

Atlas hoists no world like these

Sir Knight, of yesteryear
today mourning, we all dressed
in black—2005 fire & water
mixed with oil—gas prices rising

—Hell is Mississippi is America
for us & He Who Sees Through Stone