Chapters (15)
The latest victim won’t
get up—just lies there
in the middle of the walk
illuminating the earth
regular as breath.
He stomps and grinds
his anger in. Pulls
his foot away and yellow
streaks beneath the sole—
eggyolk flame, lurid
smear of sin.
Sisters,
laughing, take his shoes away
and bring them scraped
and ordinary
back. Idiots,
he thinks. No wonder
there’s so many of them.
But he can’t sleep.
All night beneath his bed,
the sun is out.
Depression Years
Pearl
can’t stop eating;
she wants to live!
Those professors
have it all backwards:
after fat came merriment,
simply because she was afraid to
face the world, its lukewarm
nonchalance
that generationwise had set
her people in a stupor of
religion and
gambling debts. (Sure, her
mother was an angel
but her daddy was
her man.)
Pearl laughs
a wet red laugh.
Pearl oozes
everywhere. When she was
young, she licked the walls free of chalk; she
ate dust for the minerals.
Now she just
enjoys, and excess
hardens on her like
a shell.
She sheens.
But oh, what
tiny feet! She tipples
down the stairs. She cracks a chair.
The largest baby shoe
is neat. Pearl laughs
when Papa jokes: Why don’t
you grow yourself some feet?
Her mother calls them
devil’s hooves.
Her brother
doesn’t
care.
He has
A Brain; he doesn’t notice.
She gives him of her own
ham hock, plies him with
sweetened yams. Unravels
ratted sweaters, reworks them
into socks. In the lean years
lines his shoes
with newspaper. (Main
thing is, you don’t
miss school.)
She tells him
it’s the latest style.
He never laughs.
He reads. He
shuts her out.
Pearl thinks
she’ll never marry—
though she’d
like to have
a child.
Homework
| “The Negro and his song are inseparable. If his music is primitive and if it has much that is sensuous, this is simply a part of giving pleasure, a quality appealing strongly to the Negro’s entire being. Indeed, his love of rhythms and melody, his childish faith in dreams . . .” |
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| Shit, he’ll take Science, most Exacting Art. In school when the teacher makes him lead the class in song, he’ll cough straight through. Better columns of figures, the thing dissected to the bone. Better the clear and incurious drip of fluid from pipet to reassuring beaker. |
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| “The Negro claps his hands spontaneously; his feet move constantly in joyful anticipation of the drum. . . .” |
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| Most of all he’d like to study the composition of the stars. |
Graduation, Grammar School
| Joe holds both fists out, palms down. Come on boy, guess. The boy hesitates. He knows there’s nothing in either one. |
| (The game: Who offers the hand first, man or woman? Who first lowers the eyes? If the hand is not received, whose price is reduced? And what if both are men? Or drunk? Or one is white? The possibilities are infinite.) |
| Joe sees his son flicker. Although the air is not a glass, watches as he puts his lips to the brim—then turns away, bored. He is not mine, this son who ripens, quiet poison on a shelf. |
Painting the Town
The mirror
in the hall is red.
Pearl
giggles: Pretty
as a freshly painted
barn. She tugs
a wrinkle down.
Since she’s discovered