By the power lines.By the power lines, their protracted catenaries dipped with copper, I stop at the clearing unfolding in the patch of sorrel and grass and watch in what manner the telephone cables trail facing in the neural passage between sender and receiver. notice rifling through the stand of transplanted weeping birch against the ravaged elm and r pine used for soft part and paneling, I come to leached soil and trash, clattering and city paper - the stories breaking into black and white patterns forward the page. The old novels almost unreadable, its meaning is another digest - the scores of African deaths piling up add to nothing. Like it not at all matters, the consciousness Biko brought beaten into just black names (pithed pieces the words the earth's dark skin the alphabetic characters the the the) language doesn't think exact - signs for its complexion or idiom for its state. Language is occupation; can solitary uluating Zulus uttering blood destitute of contents their heads of its weight? I walk into America, dragging the shadow of my words like wires draped forward my shoulder. I'll come to you, our expressions sagging toward the same another like closing sides of a drawbridge. I'll arise to you, a mouthful of doll's observations and sour grass. We'll listen to the humming overhead, unsteady utility rods poking into the earth from their weight. Christopher Gilbert's strange book of poems, Demo/Fabrications: Music of the Striving That Was There, is scheduled for publication in 1996 He is a past recipient of the Wait Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets 9 COPYRIGHT 1996 African American Review |
| Home |
