Natasha Trethewey

 

Elegy For the Native Guard

                                        Now that the salt of their blood    
Stiffens the saltier oblivion of the sea . . .
       —Allen Tate
 

We leave Gulfport at noon; gulls overhead

trailing the boat—streamers, noisy fanfare—

all the way to Ship Island. What we see

first is the fort, its roof of grass, a lee—

half reminder of the men who served there—

a weathered monument to some of the dead.

 

Inside we follow the ranger, hurried

though we are to get to the beach. He tells

of graves lost in the Gulf, the island split

in half when Hurricane Camille hit,

shows us casemates, cannons, the store that sells

souvenirs, tokens of history long buried.

 

The Daughters of the Confederacy

has placed a plaque here, at the fort’s entrance—

each Confederate soldier’s name raised hard

in bronze; no names carved for the Native Guards—

2nd Regiment, Union men, black phalanx.

What is monument to their legacy?

 

All the grave markers, all the crude headstones—

water-lost. Now fish dart among their bones,

and we listen for what the waves intone.

Only the fort remains, near forty feet high,

round, unfinished, half open to the sky,

the elements—wind, rain—God’s deliberate eye.

Thomas Sayers Ellis

 

A Psychoalphadiscobetabioaquadoloop

All those

Liquid love affairs,

Blind swimmers

    Trusting rumps.

We wiggled,

     Imagining water.

Wet, where was

     The One?

Nevermind Atlantis

    And the promise

Of moving pictures,

    A lit candle

In the window

    Of our conscious minds.

Those who danced,

    Pretending to swim

Underwater,

    Did so out

Of pure allegiance.

    Some wore snorkels

Made with

    The waistbands

Of funky underwear,

    Others wet suits

With clothespins

    Clamped to their noses,

Airtight as

     Black Power handshakes.

Rump-by-rump,

     The strings attached

To our thangs were

     Reeled into The Deep

And rhythmic as fins,

     Schools of P signs

Flapped and waved

     Like flags.

One nation

     Under a groove.

No one held their breath

     In the flashlit depth.

No one sank.

Max Ritvo

 

Plush Bunny

My poor little future,
you could practically fit in a shoe-box
like the one I kept peshul bunny in
when I decided I was too old to sleep with her.
I’d put a lid on the box every night.
I knew she couldn’t breathe—she was stuffed,
but I thought she’d like the dark, the quiet.
She had eyes, I could see them.
They were two stitches. My future has eyes,
for a while. Then my future has stitches,
like peshul’s. Then cool cotton, like her guts.
Of course there is another world. But it is not elsewhere.
The eye traps it so where heaven should be,
you see shadows. You start to reek.
That’s you moving on.

Jay Hopler

 1/

What else is one to do — when one has so little and so little to look

Forward to? Today, I staked the tomatoes; tomorrow, it’s going to

     rain.

2/

A cool, wet spring and everything rotten —.

3/

Forget about your bones,

This wet gets in the soul,

 

The spirit, whatever you

Want to call it, that pilot

 

Light we’re all so proud

Of, and makes you wish

 

Its sad dim flame would

Just hiss-out — the water-

 

Logged fronds of the tin

Palms dripping, the gate

Swinging, sodden, on its

Hinge.

 

4/

          The thunder down its heavy leather

Lays and from the ruined garden by the lake a hazy murmuration

    lifts into the rain-lit

Air, blurs into the mists that swirl there,

Then settles in thin wing-swept breaths

Back

Into the maidenhair —

5/

 

          I have an idea, let’s all live forever!

6/

If it doesn’t rain tomorrow, maybe I’ll water the tea roses; maybe

I’ll weed something.

Max Ritvo

Building the Tank

I love them because I am good at them.I thought of no rooms. In every stage of building, as I laid
down lines of glue, as I clamped the light, as I poured gray
pebbles, I saw life for them like detectives unburdened from
the duties of going from room to room.To be good at them means that, one day, my shadow, that
difficult marvel, will pass through water, where there is no
light, and come to be a delectation, rippling into the fish that
are like wounds, feeding them closed, and bringing quiet.