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YOUR CART

POETRY

God, please tell him leave

By Bernardo Wade





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that liquor alone. My prayer 
sweat through the paper bag 
of my unc’s skin. He felt damp
as I’d sit on his thigh, watch him
 
turn up a whole bottle of sky, 
swallow it neat
& breathe out lightning.
He’d say, this here’s my medicine
 
& I’d smile ’cause we caught storms 
if he grew ill. Most days, we’d watch 
the neighborhood turn colors,
shift its shadows till dusk
 
brought on the deep Blues.
Like a griot, he’d belly up to the keys 
& say, hear me spill an echo
of ancestors across the night’s muddy knees.
 
Said his music was bamboula
& crow & sugarcane & an ocean 
of liquor-spiced sweat, conjuring
one question: Why aren’t my loves unchained?
 
Said he wasn’t thirsty
for salvation. Shit, he swore Jesus Christ 
himself hopped down                left
two tears in his bucket & said, mother 
fuck it
You come up when you’re good & ready.
 
I still hear his dying wish:
One more & I’ll smile these golds 
before the pearly gates!
 
In his jazz funeral, I caught 
a single tear from the sky,
felt he was near, wetting each brow 
with amen. The brass band trilled,
When I die you better Second line. Oh lord,
 
you better Second line & I knew 
what made those handkerchiefs fly 
like little white doves
drunk on the bass drum’s bellow.

I remembered
we don’t bury our dead
he once said,
’cause our blood is still at play.
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About This Unit: Poems on Family and Finding Other Lines of Symmetry



BERNARDO WADE is a writer/artist from New Orleans, LA. He tries at poems & rides his bike around Bloomington, IN, because IU funds his present period of studying with others. He is a Watering Hole Fellow. He also moonlights as an equity and justice advocate. He has work published or forthcoming in Hayden’s Ferry Review, New Orleans Review, Southern Humanities Review, Salt Hill Journal, Knight's Library Magazine, and others.

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