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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. |
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.
