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.
|

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…he’s 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.
He’s 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.
He’s 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.