FIRST BOOKS ISSUE
Alan King
HORN
The more I watch the news,
the more my country resembles
a biblical city destroyed by fire;
the more I think of those
who spat on the messenger
their God sent them. At the gates
of a temple called “Beautiful,”
sat a blind man. How many of us
are him? Sometimes there’s no name
for what runs the streets with
misspelled picket signs and hate
as its bullhorn. Sometimes
what’s wrong with this life
could be an avalanche ready
to wipe us out. The only true Bible
might be your open arms. Your name
is a communion wafer on my tongue.
The only true psalm might be
what washes over us while
we sleep, your breath in my ears—
the sound in a shell.
CHAGRIN
When security escorts a woman
back to the register, you hear
other shoppers whispering
their speculations—the alarm’s
tone before plainclothes officers
flank her at the door, their hands
beckoning to come with them.
And does it matter that
you both are among the few
African Americans in a department
store that once forced Blacks
to shop in the basement, and where
Jim Crow banned your elders from
the dressing rooms? Can all
the civil rights marches and integration
keep you from flinching
at how one of your own
is handled—the officers
jerking their suspect around,
the woman shouting
for them to take their hands
off her. And afterwards,
will anything make this right
again—the gift cards
or the cashier’s apology
after waving the receipt,
explaining she forgot to
disarm the anti-theft device?
CRAVINGS
Follow the trail of bones,
after Tim Seibles
and they might lead you
back to a city block
of busted hydrants—
an area scattered with
bodies gnarled like gummi
candies and the licorice
of twisted metal from
uprooted buildings.
When I stomp, streets are
Graham crackers crumbling
under a child’s fist. I’ve chomped
my way, like Pac Man, through
fast food chains; I am
a bi-coastal gopher eating
his way across America,
my brain hijacked by hunger
whose demolition tendencies
send me on a feeding frenzy—
overturning police cruisers,
swatting at helicopters
buzzing around
like dragonflies.
HIGH NOONA storm's been gathering
Clouds gallop across
on the Horizon for months now.
—Nathalie Graham, "But, Rosa"
the aerial frontier. 13 years old.
A cowboy with pants pockets
for gun holsters. I slingshot stones
at the heads of flowers
and do my wishbone walk
into the horizon like the heroes
in Westerns after slaying
bad guys. I could be
Don Quixote rushing
at what I think are monsters.
Friends say the real ones carry guns
and shiny badges.
Dad says my mind’s loose
as rope. Might use it
to lasso the sun.
Hogtie it to a cloud stallion
and ride, and ride.
My heart might have been
AT SELAM'S
for Tosin
a candle the way it flickered.
We were in a club below U Street
dancing to Afrobeat.
Wanted to say those three words
that night. You painted
your face with white dots along
your nose and forehead.
All I knew of you then
could fit inside the head
of a flame. And I might’ve been
a lantern glowing from what
I wanted to tell you.
But those words were lost
in the roll of your hips when
you lifted your hem to the side
as if what pulsed from speakers
bared its horns before charging at us.
They were lost amongst silhouettes
knocked around by the rhythm;
lost in a room of dumb bodies
the DJ jerked like a puppet master.
That night you grinded my back into
the brick wall and took my tongue
the way a tsunami overtakes
a small boat.
That night I was haunted
by worst-case scenarios—
a needle scratching
the vinyl record,
its waxy silence.
Alan King is the author of Drift (Willow Books, 2012). He teaches part-time at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts and is senior program director at the DC Creative Writing Workshop at Charles Hart Middle School. King is a Cave Canem Fellow, an alumus of the VONA Workshops sponsored by Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation, and an MFA candidate in the Stonecoast Low-Residency Program at the University of Southern Maine.Willow Books, the literary imprint of Aquarius Press, specializes in literature by writers typically underrepresented in the market. Reprinted by permission.
Published in Volume 14:1, Winter 2013.
To read more by this author:
Alan King: Museum Issue
Alan King on Charles Simic: US Poets Laureate Issue
Alan King on Karibu Books: Literary Organizations Issue