ChickenBones: A Journal

for Literary & Artistic African-American Themes

   

Home  

Google
 

we are unexpected at the feast / for those with algebraic digits

 
 

 

That Which Hurts

 

        By Rudolph Lewis

With hands older than night chaotic

& fingers of the dead under baobab

 

trees, we’re aware everybody who

speaks of heaven will not go up

 

Yet forgive today’s crimes against

us for tomorrow’s mirage. Hungry

 

we are unexpected at the feast

for those with algebraic digits

 

First they knife the surplus, then

with coded words & the dark spit

 

of contempt show us the cliff

All in this land take note, here is

 

our welcome from our neighbors

—rhinos nuzzle black buttocks

 

Responses

Rudy,  I like this, especially the lines "yet forgive today's crimes against us for tomorrow's mirage."  A part of me wants mirage to be miracle, but mirage suits the poem better I think.  –Jeannette

Nicely delivered message with excellent imagery –Kam

posted 5 January 2005

 

 

Home 

Related File:  Heartbreak Hotel   No Mardi Gras Without Soul   Postcard from Hell  Ode to Bowling Balls   Naked in the Outer Darkness

  Music That Heals   That Which Hurts  In a Time of Chaos    Down by the Riverside      I Aint No Alarmist  Wintertime in America  Mosquitoes Fly Out My Head