The BlueIris Semi-Nightly Poetry Break, 2/18/08

[BlueIris]

"How I See Things"

I hear you were
sprawled on the cover of Newsweek
with freedom marchers, those years
when blood tinted the photographs,
when fire leaped into the trees.

Negatives of nightriders
develop in the brain.
The Strawberry Festival Queen
waves her silk handkerchief,

executing a fancy high kick
flashback through the heart.
Pickups with plastic Jesuses
on dashboards head for hoedowns.
Men run twelve miles into wet cypress
swinging bellropes. Ignis fatuus can't be blamed

for the charred Johnson grass.
Have we earned the right
to forget, forgive
ropes for holding
to moonstruck branches?

Every last stolen whisper
the hoot owl echoes
turns leaves scarlet.
Hush shakes the monkeypod
till pink petal-tongues fall.

You're home in New York.
I'm here in Bogalusa
with one foot in the pinewoods.
The mockingbird's blue note
sounds to me like please,

please. A beaten song
threaded through the skull
by crosshairs.
Black hands still turn blood red
working the strawberry fields.

—Yusef Komunyakka

[Tuesday Afternoon]

1. yeah

Febrauary.

[BlueIris]

2. Isn't this a great poem?

[Tuesday Afternoon]

3. excellent

very,very excellent. Thought about googling the author. Have you posted him before?

[BlueIris]

4. I've posted a couple of other things by Y.K. One about Michael Jackson

on February...3rd? And one about Vietnam on or around this past Veteran's Day.

[BlueIris]

5. Kick.