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2015-01-15-Charleston_600 (1).jpg

Two Poems by Cortney Lamar Charleston

January 15, 2015

Two Poems by Cortney Lamar Charleston

Strays

for Shamiya Adams

 

And it darts across the street with the speed

of a rumor’s shadow – a dark and discreet beast

 

about his size, small configuration of bones

that he is. The curious child points out the source

 

of his startle to his father, who rubs out the

flame of his nervousness with his hands. It’s just

 

a cat. It’s probably a stray that doesn’t have a

home. And the boy nods, because he gets things.

 

Attaches the word stray to the animal with a

few drops of Elmer’s glue, asks if it will ever find

 

a home someday. I think it will. Gravitational

pull between bodies is fate even God can’t alter.

 

 

Remember, he married her not too long ago.

Wife worked for the post office, had a route out

 

south. The two of them had a baby recently,

too. So sad. And he hears another voice bounce

 

off the wall: how’d it happen? And the reply

in a firm whisper: it was a stray. Little boy does

 

the math with his fingers. One in place of

another, stray for mother: baby gets a new cat,

 

but the milk eventually runs out for both.

Numbers apparently do lie about their weight.

 

 

It happened right there on Jeffrey, I think.

Came clean through the window while they

 

were driving – nearly took the child out

the other door still in the car seat. Little boy

 

watches his nature specials; knows that

felines can pounce. He’s not sure why they

 

are surprised. He does the math with his

fingers. One in place of another, stray for a

 

child: the parents get a cat to keep, sleep

straight through the night, but morning will

 

come and the applesauce goes to waste.

Nine lifetimes go by and it still isn’t touched.

 

 

Ailurophile: a lover of cats. They have cats

in their hearts, cats on their minds. Cats in

 

their most fragile places, anywhere that is

soft enough to give at the slightest pressure.

 

That’s where these critters always seem to

retire – in the warmth of child, of woman

 

that couldn’t bear to see something as tiny

as a cat be left out in the cold. This is what

 

the little boy tells himself, what everyone

tells themselves, to avoid constructing fear

 

of the places they call home, of the hissing

that loudens in their ears as it nears them,

 

of a gun-shot bit as sharp as the center of

a cat’s eye: being pierced as if by its stare.

 

 

Self-Portrait as a Tea Bag

 

Submerge: to harmonize with others             under

some banner, a symbol                         on which to place

the prepositional phrases of                 belief in, faith in.

 

And the congregation sings wade in the water

as I cleanse within an ocean-apparition;

their voices,

distorted by a wall of liquid, sound the mouthing of the

word whale inside my four-year-old ears,

 

the whale’s voice being the frequency of waves history

is written in to be forgotten

more easily, if even heard at all.

 

For that moment, I am lonely the way God was lonely

after flooding the earth             for the sake of

better.               As I float,

the pool begins to blacken as though I am several

tea leaves rolled in a white robe.         Pastor’s

 

prayer silks in, through, and out of my body, getting

it clean of the word nigger before I have ever

heard it in the context of my type of darkness.

 

As in the darkness of skin. As in the darkness of souls

inside dark skin; I see the water further

shading around me. I have to resist the temptation

to drink all the sin I inherited back into myself,

 

it being reflection to the comforting Southern brew my

granny keeps refrigerated at all times, that my

granddaddy gave me as a baby instead of milk.

 

Back then, what it meant to be called sweet by

a church crown: this boy is full of everything

my diabetes can’t handle,

everything my blood has tried to erase.

 

It was the reason I was raised in a church,

why any Richard Wright novel of a child

is raised in church, especially in a city where gun

and God           interchange on the revolve of person

and what rests               in their chambers       of heart.

 

And either way,             their circle will say

we baptize you my young brother, in the name

of the Father, in the name of the Son, in the name of

 the Holy Ghost.                         Either way, make amen.


Cortney Lamar Charleston lives in Jersey City, NJ. He is an alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania’s performance poetry collective, The Excelano Project, and a founder of BLACK PANTONE, an inclusive digital cataloging of black identity. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Eleven Eleven, Folio, Chiron Review, J Journal, Kweli Journal, Winter Tangerine Review, CURA: A Literary Magazine of Art; Action and elsewhere. He has received nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

In Poetry Tags Cortney Lamar Charleston
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