poetry quarterly

10th anniversary

Niki Herd

 

SONNET: CONRAD MURRAY WATCHES MICHAEL JACKSON
PREMIER THE MOONWALK, 1983


He owned America, and each fiber
of the camera’d show-stage begged, colonized
by a pair: black loafers marked by sequin
socks destined to royalty. His lover
was not Billie Jean so his crooning urged
nor did the crazed fans care, they idolized
the man with moves that almost vaporized
poverty and war; from my island perch
then I was still not an innocent man.
I understood hunger, that constant beast
wound in the body, always fed, but fright-
fully famished. That night of the gloved hand
brought night-sky galaxy dreams and the reach
of one lone star to be my guiding light.

 

 

BASKETBALL BOP FOR KING JAMES
UPON LEAVING THE CLEVELAND CAVALIERS

after my husband & his fist ain’t want me
after in Memphis, Tennessee, they shot King
after my mama’s lungs filled, released & quit
i drove a single road to work
where for five days a week, the only
geographical marker, was a burnt wooden cross.

oh, run run, mourner run .......bright angels above

now tonight the news is set upon patrons
their bodies outside some bar
angled off that same road, which seems
from my view to have gotten longer &
harder in the ageless open air, some
stupefied, some drunk with epithet &
anger, others readied with fluid & matchstick
to burn the only thing they can—your jersey.

oh, run run, mourner run .......bright angels above

back in my day, they use to call a TV
the idiot box & burning black men was
the national pastime. i should switch
the station, but i imagine nothing but
more of the same, a master quilt of color
smell of wood, sound of lament & grieve.

oh, run run, mourner run .......bright angels above

 


COOKIE MONSTER TO FIRST LADY MICHELLE OBAMA
BACKSTAGE AFTER A TAPING OF SESAME STREET

you

a poem manifesting
connecting

constellations between
worlds, scripting

soul shifting sacredness
lit up like moons

you island traveler
leaving

trails of afro aesthetics
you is a righteous sister

eyebrows
tinge of sepia

voice

thick as the chords
of simone

pretty
as miss piggy

............is fat

and

together, we should do some math
together, you and me, one plus one

we can flee and make

cookies
cookies
cookies

gingerbread
peanut butter
iced lemon
sugar
oatmeal raisin

and

double
chocolate chip

can
you tell me .... how to get
..............................how to get

to your street

because your face
within the space of any

other is
tight, meaning fine as

your newly pressed hair
you

woman
brown-skinned woman
black girl
the alphabet of my
religion

from the south side
of chi-town

i am no man, only
puppet

but

i look at you
have looked at you, and

keep falling into
prayer.

painting

David Carlson
Ambient Chaos
2010, oil and acrylic on canvas 72" x 60"
see more work by David Carlson

 

 

THE KING

Rock and roll was the way it came
rounded out of his mouth like his cheek, teeth

and tongue made a melody centuries old
in America, in Illinois, in Evanston

at the concert, so much was in the air
wonder there was any room for breathing.

F105’s in a place called Vietnam, fists
and flags, the shouts of poor white folks

searching for something called freedom.
Thirty years into the future, bodies

would fall from burning buildings, a human
confetti no one saw coming in 1971

gravity always on the side of the underdog
when his saliva spread like a continent on her foot.

When she tells the story to us grandchildren
she will say a bee bite ain’t the only thing to sting.

That the man with the mouth on stage
was named Elvis Aaron Presley

that he was already king, and she a woman
whose left and right foot met the dance floor

like the steady and knowing hands of a whore
in the sweated arch of a man’s back

whose life, punctuated by the howls of sweet jesus
and the holy ghost, born of the twins marvel & misery

was changed by the inescapable rhythm of this country
as one is when suddenly caught in the path

of a bomb, or the wettest falling star.

 

 

HE’S GOT THE WHOLE WORLD IN HIS HANDS

Mahalia’s song plays every Sunday morning, her
voice reaching out from the wooden stereo credenza

as you prepare supper and ready yourself toward tomorrow,
the business of cleaning toilets for Eisenberg

in the better part of town…hes got the whole world
in his hands
…your own hands brown with deep

trenches around the knuckles as if each finger has endured
its own separate life, muscular, not manly, use to

dirt digging and planting mums the color of tangerines.
Hes got the whole world…hands no stranger to cast iron

skillets, the combing of defiant hair, or a strong
drink or two to numb pain that takes root underground

like the eldest tree…in his hands…pain that rests beneath
skin like meaning lies underneath a word that then becomes

gospel sung this morning as you sit wedged between
your husband and the child you didn't want, my mother.

Hes got the whole world…you call yourself
Gladys Love Lewis, as if everything is worthy of

your middle name. One day I will be warned against
your kind, told there is no room for your poetry, every

story a sorry victim riddled with alcohol and illness.
But this poem is not about the gin and pills, the cancer

or stroke, or the strange sexual appetite of your man
and girl child to come. This is about a song etched

in memory, and two women…in his hands, Gladys
Love and Mahalia, vinyl spinning to the needle’s edge.

 


Niki Herd is the author of The Language of Shedding Skin (Main Street Rag, 2010). She is the recipient of grants from the Astraea Foundation and the Arizona Commission on the Arts, and fellowships from Cave Canem and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Herd grew up in Cleveland and earned degrees from the University of Arizona and Antioch University Los Angeles. She lives in Washington, DC.

 

Published in Volume 13, Number 2, Spring 2012.