American Poets in the 21st Century

by Claudia Rankine

  when the raw, oozing hives that

  covered ninety-eight percent of our bodies

  from the sprays ordered by the FDA

  and spread by landowners,

  before anyone had seen

  automated machines that top and prime.

  While we topped the lavender

  blooms of many tiny flowers

  gathered into one, gorgeous.

  By grasping hold below the petals

  with our bare, calloused hands

  and twisting downward, quick, hard,

  only one time, snapped them off.

  Before edgers and herbicides took

  what they call weeds,

  when we walked for days

  through thirty acres and

  chopped them out with hoes.

  Hoes, made long before from wood and steel

  and sometimes (even longer ago)

  from wood and deer scapula.

  Before the bulk primers came

  and we primed all the leaves by hand,

  stooped over at the waist for the

  lower ones and through the season

  gradually rising higher until we stood

  and worked simultaneously,

  as married to the fields as we were to each other,

  carrying up to fifty pounds of fresh

  leaves under each arm and sewing them onto

  sticks four feet long on a looper

  under the shade of a tin-roofed barn, made of shingle,

  and poking it up through the rafters inside

  to be caught by a hanger who

  poked it up higher in the rafters to another

  who held a higher position

  and so they filled the barn.

  And the leaves hung down

  like butterfly wings, though

  sometimes the color of

  luna moths, or Carolina parakeets, when just

  an hour ago they had been

  laid upon the old wooden

  cart trailers pulled behind

  the orange Allis-Chalmers tractor

  with huge round fenders and only

  a screwdriver and salt in the toolbox.

  Picked by primers so hot

  we would race through the rows

  to reach the twenty-five gallon

  jugs of water placed throughout

  the field to encourage and in attempt to

  satisfy our insatiable thirsts

  from drinking air which poured

  through our pores without breaking

  through to our need for more

  water in the Sun.

  Sun we imagined to disappear

  yet respected for growing all things on earth

  when quenched with rains called forth

  by our song and drumming.

  Leaves, which weeks later, would be

  taken down and the strings pulled

  like string on top of a large dog food bag

  and sheeted up into burlap sheets

  that bundled over a hundred pounds

  when we smashed down with our feet,

  but gently smashing,

  then thrown up high to

  a catcher on a big clapboard trailer

  pulled behind two-ton trucks and

  taken to market in Fuquay-Varina

  and sold to Philip Morris and

  Winston-Salem  for around a buck a pound.

  Leaves cured to a bright leaf,

  a golden yellow with the strongest

  aroma of tobacco barn-curing

  and hand-grown quality

  before the encroachment of

  big business in the Reagan era

  and the slow murder of method

  from a hundred years before.

  When the loons cried out in

  laughter by the springs and

  the bass popped the surface on

  the pond, early on, next to

  the fields, before that time

  when it was unfashionable to

  transplant each individual baby plant,

  the infant tobacco we nurtured, to

  transplant those seedlings to each hill

  in the field, the space for that particular plant

  and we watched  as  they would grow.

  Before all of this new age, new way,

  I was a sharecropper in Willow Springs, North Carolina

  as were you and we were proud to be Tsa la gi

  wishing for winter so we could make camp

  at Qualla Boundary and the Oconaluftee River

  would be free of tourists and filled with snow

  and those of us who held out forever

  and had no CIBs would be home again

  with our people, while the BIA forgot to watch.

  When we still remembered before even the Europeans,

  working now shoulder to shoulder with descendants

  of their slaves they brought from Africa

  when they sold our ancestors as slaves into the Middle East,

  that then the tobacco was sacred to all of us and we

  prayed whenever we smoked and

  did not smoke for pleasure  and

  I  was content and free.

  Then they came and changed things

  and you left me for a fancy white girl

  and I waited on the land

  until you brought her back

  in that brand-new white Trans Am,

  purchased from our crop,  you gave her

  and left her waiting in a motel,

  the nearest one was forty miles away,

  but near enough for you

  and for her and I knew though

  I never spoke a word to you

  about it, I knew and I kept it to

  myself to this day and time and

  I never let on

  until I left on our anniversary.

  I drove the pickup

  down the dirt path by the empty fields

  and rented a shack for eighty dollars,

  the one with cardboard windows

  and a Gillespie house floor design,

  with torn and faded floral paper on walls

  and linoleum so thin over rotted board

  that the floor gave if you weighed over

  a hundred pounds, I did not.

  And with no running water of any kind,  or bathroom.

  The one at hilltop, where I could

  see out across all the fields

  and hunt for meat when I wanted

  and find peace.

  I heard you remarried

  and went into automated farming

  and kept up with America.

  I watched all of you from the hill

  and I waited for the lavender blooms

  to return  and when it was spring

  even the blooms had turned white.

  I rolled up my bedroll,  remembering before,

  when the fields were like waves on a green ocean,

  and turned away, away from the change

  and corruption of big business on small farms

  of traditional agricultural people, and sharecroppers.

  Away, so that I could always hold this concise image

  of before that time and it

  floods my memory.

  FROM Blood Run

  Skeletons

  All that is good is with us—

  remains in subtle dusk,

  holds the base of lifetimes.

  We belong here. Let us be.

  Do not unsettle us.

  Do not bring harm, nor further journey.

  We have finished with this world,

  have returned to it.

  Until there is dust we must remain

  settled here where we were lain.

  Our People labored for this honoring

  no human
should dismantle prayer.

  Ghosts

  When all the doghair, squirreltail, foxtail,

  porcupine, buffalo, pony grasses run

  impression strummed,

  along slopes, gradient rise—

  When Mullein presses low,

  red willow limbs quiver, whirlwinds shiver,

  release silver-spotted skippers,

  monarchs, white butterflies

  take to wing, to firmament—

  lifting miracle commotion,

  phenomena now we.

  In translucency of leaves,

  overcast sun, rolling,

  lightening, shadowing  breadth of green—

  In this acuity, this keenness

  Insight pronounces utterances

  not unlike prophesy.

  For those who heed, prefigure, perceive.

  For those who distinguish

  modern from manifest,

  in everything all familiar.

  We will have beckoned you to return to us,

  return our skeletal remains to shelter here,

  return our longing.

  Then, in quiet whispering,

  momentary stillness reveals.

  Skeletons

  Just yesterday some of us returned home.

  Away from archeological scholar filings,

  home where we should have always lain.

  Just yesterday before, we were still live.

  In the time passed while life developed

  our framework, fully cultivated casing,

  while structure of our statures discerned,

  we were perceived as one with The People,

  now possess mere remnants of all we were,

  souls passed, relative to all surround.

  We still stand the test, uphold each,

  every essential instrument of life as it exists.

  Still relishing essences, tastes, hours of humankind,

  await opportunity to sleep, to sleep, to sleep, to sleep.

  FROM Streaming

  We Were in a World

  We were in a world, in a world, in a world. Sure, we had our glyphs, but we were providential. Once, some alphabet believers, glass purveyors, Ursus Arctos killers, sent all bailiwick on cursed course far faster gyration backspin, birling intrinsic angular momentum—boson melts. Spinning, it careened away iceberg, iceberg, iceberg; glacier braced time traced yesterday unshakable base—all below flushed alluvion torrent, Niagara pour, special spate, flux, flow, until their coastal citadels moldered from cyclone, tsunami, hurricane gale. Tornadoes tossed turf wherever they pleased. Eruptions molded Her back into something She deemed worthy. Not to mention quakes. And the people, the people, the People, pushed into cataclysm, a few generations from alphabet book imposed catechism, soon were calamity tragedy storm splinters, fragmented particles of real past, in a world gone away from oratory, song, oraliteratures, orations into gyrations reeling. Soon hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot. Hot, dying mangroves, disappearing Waimea Bay, Dengue fever, butterfly range shift, meadow gone forest, desert sprung savannah, caribou, black guillemot, bats, frogs, snails—gone. What will Sandhill Cranes crave? Winged lay early. Reefs bleach. Rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, snow, snow, snow, fires flaming fiercely, fascinated in their own reflecting glare. Marmots rise early. Mosquitoes endure longer, lasting biting spreading West Nile. Polar bears quit bearing. Robins, swallows, enter Inuit life. Thunder finds Inupiat. Here, it is said, glyphs left rock wall, stone plates, bark, branch, leapt animated into being, shook shoulders, straightened story, lifted world upon their wing bone, soared into Night, to place World back into socket eased sky—stilled us. Some say the soup leftover was worded with decolonized language. Some say the taste lingers even now.

  America, I Sing You Back

  for Phil Young and my father Robert Hedge Coke;

  for Whitman and Hughes

  America, I sing back. Sing back what sung you in.

  Sing back the moment you cherished breath.

  Sing you home into yourself and back to reason.

  Before America began to sing, I sung her to sleep,

  held her cradleboard, wept her into day.

  My song gave her creation, prepared her delivery,

  held her severed cord beautifully beaded.

  My song helped her stand, held her hand for first steps,

  nourished her very being, fed her, placed her three sisters strong.

  My song comforted her as she battled my reason

  broke my long-held footing sure, as any child might do.

  As she pushed herself away, forced me to remove myself,

  as I cried this country, my song grew roses in each tear’s fall.

  My blood-veined rivers, painted pipestone quarries

  circled canyons, while she made herself maiden fine.

  But here I am, here I am, here I remain high on each and every peak,

  carefully rumbling her great underbelly, prepared to pour forth singing—

  and sing again I will, as I have always done.

  Never silenced unless in the company of strangers, singing

  the stoic face, polite repose, polite while dancing deep inside, polite

  Mother of her world. Sister of myself.

  When my song sings aloud again. When I call her back to cradle.

  Call her to peer into waters, to behold herself in dark and light,

  day and night, call her to sing along, call her to mature, to envision—

  then, she will quake herself over. My song will make it so.

  When she grows far past her self-considered purpose,

  I will sing her back, sing her back. I will sing. Oh I will—I do.

  America, I sing back. Sing back what sung you in.

  POETICS STATEMENT

  Quipu: a poetic

  Life’s a tangle. Serendipitous symphonic reverb splintering strike set amplified acoustic wail we wind through. Narrows split with stone spines, hefting unintelligible weight, shucking confluence keen. Each temporal knot testimony to measuring up, mustering, true mettle, making malleable every juncture cinched up and thrown down. You want to breathe? Make it worthy. Make it tag dawn like Morning Star’s sudden transitory entry from the vault to evanescent clutch of night.

  My mind hosts a radio. Songs sail around smooth internal waves, roll rapids, still rash, and somewhere in there the music platforms each cognition.

  Sparks flash fire, slash ruminations, sash up, stitch / seam ready. Chords cord, twine-like, sinew, snap out releasing quick light display easing into language pertinent to whatever culled calls for, and then the work, making.

  What’s the muster?

  Growing, cracker packing, weaving, fast food slinging, soft serve service, waiting tables, landscaping, soundscaping, cultivating, sharecropping tobacco and sweet potatoes, migrant fieldwork, fruit picking, horse breaking, dog training, wrecking foundations, demolition, heavy equipment operation, carpentry, commercial fishing, night auditing, bar keeping, letting go, leaving, mourning, lobbying, organizing, shortchanging suicide, wrangling violence, interchanging abilities / lack thereof, cultivating life, dreaming—built earth, bird councils, canoeing, swimming, singing, story, play, place, prayer, peace, protecting—

  Laboring, it’s been with us. Some of Dad never left the cotton patch, the creek, dust, the war. Some of Mom never left Chief Mountain, Lake Louise, Toronto Inglis (War) Factory, or any one of many asylums. Me, way deep in tobacco leaf, somehow. Curved by every fold of mountain, skim of stream, by each single borne aggression laid out on me and every sliver of hope graced within. We are what we’ve been made of, the mountains, rivers, streams, and all the plants and creatures ever handled by our bodies. What we’ve been through. Story / culture equation we know as life, sometimes rife with sheared endeavor. Sometimes so ultimately genuine, gorgeous, brilliant, no matter what went on the taste of it overrides, gives us reason, makes us amend, correct, brings purpose.

  Lessons learne
d.

  If something’s wrong, broken, do something about it, fix it. If you need something done, make it happen. Do it yourself, don’t be a burden to anybody else. Help others. Build community. Be the glue. Learn and share what you gather. Remember where you’ve come from, who we are, what we do. Bring all of it forward to help out those coming. Give the future a solid past, a proper stone to grow from and return to. Time is fleeting and only what we make of it. Get to it.

  If you speak, make it meaningful. If you write it, fill it with meaning that will work beyond the time any control is in your own hands.

  Nights warmed by children, elders, ditch dogs, slinking cats. Mornings lifted with cranesong amid hundreds of thousands of rising wings, on lands populated for tens of thousands of generations of story / song living. Leftover platitudes overlay dense spectrum of significance from knowings, from seeking people have curated and kept for eons. This place, unlike any other, until you find the heat of it, the crevice, there, deep in the cradle we’re held in, pictograph lined, stacked earth lain, cherished, attributed, loved. Makes language what it need be in the source, the beat, heart / hoof drumming. Rides down cliff edge, split turn 180° on iced Hamburger Hill, forty below. Rabbit punched. Hospitalized. Raped. Crushed car mangled matter. Malnourished. Malignancies. Defects at birth. Resuscitated at birth, in anaphylactic reactions, in sugar fits, in seizures. You don’t even want to know the most of it. The real there. Go ahead, think it’s been easy. Makes a good story that way. I’ll smile and go with you until I drop in truth, punctuate that. Fostering, you name it, we’ve been there. So many of us here speaking the sound escapes from sewer caps straight down the rain glistened street ghosts shimmer.

  Loss, what we had, most of it. Most of who we loved, especially loves of life.

  Me, just a slight slice of the greater. We, is where it’s at. Collectively considered.

  So it goes. The poems filtrate sediment congested leveling life and give it new breath. They are the breath. The inhale / exhale of composition. Counting every syllable until the music fits and concept is rested.

  RESURRECTING THE SERPENT, REACTIVATING GOOD EARTH

  Allison Hedge Coke’s Blood Run

  Chadwick Allen

   Alongside Big Sioux River, a Missouri tributary, at

  the site formally called Blood Run, now Good

  Earth, a twin of the serpent mound in Ohio once