This piece is by David Safford.
the baby’s name was
June and she went to heaven
before she came out a little
different, with a beautiful
nose and eyes that would
close. She didn’t walk
‘til Jesus held her hand,
but that was after the preacher with the long
nose and eyes that would
brighten at the mention of
hell
burned those four tattoed words
onto her mother’s soul. He meant
well but studied the wrong
lines from the saddest songs
about that angry, red
face in the throbbing, purple
sky. And when he died
(for the holy man smoked
two packs a day)
his wife cried aloud in sudden
relief
that he’d never
known, never suspected, the
cancer inside her, inside
her brain, inside her heart, inside her
where it spoke
with the words of King David
to Bathsheba
the wife of a
dead man. She lived like
a psalm, a cry aloud to a ghostly god
with a lawyer’s voice and a glacial
nose and eyes that looked
to a younger woman’s pleasing
prayers. She left
a son, a man with clay-orange
boots leaving tread in
the bush
on their way with books, bottles
of medical gospels
to mend the scarred
machetes and machine gun hunger
that thirsted to cut those boots
loose
from their owner. And they
did, one night outside
the widow’s hut,
the orphan’s home,
and the dizzying fog of potato
liquor, its fumes making love
to the smoke
left behind. Why,
he had cried, not
in the moments
he died, but why
had the husband left
and the village chief come by
asking for favors
in exchange for
protection,
(but
protection from what? from the
virus he bore? from
the lies he told? from the cage of darkness and distance and a nameless
hole in the Earth?) so
he departed, giving no favors
and no protections and when
they came, the husband
was already a vapor, a flimsy veil,
and the bullets pierced
her pages of the Gospel
of Matthew. Not far
from where his remains were piled
up a woman
smoothed her dress
over her warm, swelling middle,
called it a soft word, rocking
it,
a he or she or something in
between, a stranger to life
and breath
and the sting of breaking
skin, a foreigner
who shall be repelled, expelled, defaced,
or welcomed as a brother
or sister or something
holy. Have you
been a stranger? Have
you been lost? Have you been
sent into the dark
and the choking mist
of rejection’s fetid night where
the leaves slap your cheeks
leaving ink that stabs
into your skin and
bones
for all to see? And
so she rocks and she pats
and hums
the dumb little creature
(that is a parasite, mind
you)
that is likely damned. She remembers
her one trip to the city, where the smog
was as clear
as mud on her caked feet
but she saw an auto
mobile for the very
last time. In it was a
white man
who frowned and gaped
at every brown face
full of pride and perfect
strength
to carry the loads
(of laundry or water or vegetables or fruit or vaccines
or ammunition clips)
that were the prizes
of the long, burning day. My
God, he
sighed, my God, my God, like
wind and fog, clear as
ice on the wind. He
flew home later that week
(the jet lag was a night
mare)
and spoke for months to other whitened
visions and visages, his words
the sound of a framed photo
graph on the wall of your
local Starbucks, and they
gasped my God, my God, all
their heads nodding, nodding, praying, wishing, weeping
and the voice of one
rose above the rest, an old
man with a jungle
of whiskers, whose wife
had wished to muddy her own
feet in such red, red clay. He
said “Cancer, the cancer!” and
before anyone could stop him
he said, “Her cancer, my
cancer, we fought the cancer! The
cancer, cancer, cancer!” until it
was only a word
and the widow beside him
didn’t know what he was talking about
anymore, at least for a
moment. The man
went home, patted
his dying pup, muttered
“Cancer,”
and shuffled off
to his grave, the hot dirt
piled fresh
beside his patterned sheets. His
daughter held his hand. She whispered
his name. She paryed his
secret prayers. She hid
the ugly things
before the grandchildren
pillaged
the house. And she carried
his folded flag
home, to the house
where he was born, a place
(with not a single god
damned decent job in sight)
many days away, at least behind
the lonely wheel
of a sputtering Volvo. She found
the house, two stories,
and a yard walled up
by corn, and knocked
and waited. The young woman
who now owned the house
was pregnant, her warm, swelling
middle hiding
a beautiful nose, and eyes
that would close, and she hung the flag
where it would wave
at everyone
who’d never known its owner
and the hero who earned
it and never would. And before
they parted, the two
embraced, wondered if
they’d meet again, if the child
would be giggling with glee
over the blanket-like lawn. She’s
due in June, the expectant
mother smiled, so they agreed
to find one another
again, it was a plan
they said, and the old man’s daughter drove away. And
as the tail
lights faded
under the purple sky above
the sighing fields of proud
corn, she wiped a tear
at the kick of a foot
that was yearning, hoping,
praying,
oh-so-ready,
to walk.