Dangerous Goods. Sean Hill
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Barely enough room for burial—squeezed
in tight like a coffin too small—surrounded
by others, sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers
like books shelved—handsomely bound
in black—volumes in an ongoing travelogue
Day 5
“I was born”
Black and bold
sprayed on a concrete mooring block
on the pier
A stock line
the “once upon a time” of Slave Narratives
They were born in America
Day 6
Framed by the porthole’s red rim
two blues meet
Waves rise redundant undulant
a cat’s hackles—deep blue
(of brand new jeans he buys for the label)
indigo that was king before cotton
Day 7
Bombay Sapphire I bought duty free
in a bottle the clear blue of the water
at a Bahamian beach
does not comfort me.
VOICES IN ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL
for Geddes Thomas
Christopher Wren designed it from base to dome—
built in the 17th & 18th centuries,
declared complete about ninety years after
the first twenty were brought to Jamestown.
Alone in the Whispering Gallery
I lean to the ear of no one to my left—
Can you hear me?
A voice, my father’s,
his father’s, comes from the right—
Can you hear me?
I’ve brought voices here with me;
they linger the way odors do.
A friend who visited the citadel at Gorée Island said
you can smell death left over from the days of the trade.
for Eric Black
Big Ben’s struck five again.
Why am I here at the Millennium Wheel,
the eye of London? I don’t want to queue-up—
won’t queue-up, but I’m here.
London is lousy with old buildings,
statues, parks, theaters, and museums.
The Tate Britain houses a piece by Richard Dadd—
a nineteenth century Brit.
Killed his father and lived a long life
in asylums painting fairy landscapes.
The soundtrack for this solitary sojourn
quiet and incidental like the puzzle piece
found face down when I disembarked at Heathrow—
a dreary oatmeal until turned over to reveal
no pattern, a solid green, unexpected—
hard to place like the tune the guy on the Tube whistled
now rattling my head or the dead pigeon I saw
from Westminster Bridge yesterday floating in the Thames
—wings slightly out somewhere mid-flap—either fluttering
down on sidewalk clutter or clapping away
from the progress of pedestrians—
flying on the waves of tour boats’ wakes.
POSTCARD TO ANNA
for A. Potter
In Cairo I missed street pigeons; they were
not there at the open-air eatery where
I dined with Jasmine off Talaat Harb
when the morsel of macaroni missed
my mouth. I only saw pigeons on menus
and the backseat of a Peugeot in and atop
a sturdy-looking wooden cage because
the cage door was open. There were
no sparrows to clean up my mess either.
We found them on a menu a few days
later. The waiter hesitated, then translated
the Arabic for our table, and we said Yes,
we want sparrows. The hesitation at bones
holding up, resisting the jaw, my maw,
those bones for tendons to bind muscles
to and help buoy that tiny body above
the flow of folk with their sedentary
urban tendencies, a mouthful that came
with a people stopping by this river,
edged with papyrus that they beat flat
and dried brown to leave notes for each
other. They were delicious, those sparrows,
in their port wine sauce.
POSTCARD TO MY THIRD CRUSH TODAY
I’ve been on the move; the bottoms
of my shoes have rested on forty-eight states,
six Canadian Provinces, seven countries,
three continents, and the crush is constant.
You look like someone’s daughter;
I find that so attractive. I once
thought this, but now it’s someone’s
mother or aunt more often than not
or cousin or uncle or brother or son
on occasion. The crush is everywhere,
or maybe it’s me, my luck, like always
seeing the corner crooners by the storefront
of The Heart, loitering—singing for quarters
and grins. Most days I can count on the first
and second crush, and sometimes there’s a fifth
or sixth. They’re as likely not to notice me
as to smile in my eyes. Either way my heart
skips like those flat stones that kiss the skin
of the pond and fly off again before sinking.
Today it is you in that polka dot dress I need
to thank for getting me to three. The Heart’s
a big chain; there’s one everywhere you go,
and