Day After Day of the Dead
“While we’ re alive,” we kept
repeating. Tongues, throats,
roofs of our mouths bone dry,
skeletons we’ d someday
be...
Panicky masks we wore for
effect more than effect,
more real than we’ d admit...
Nathaniel Mackey
Eye on the Scarecrow
The way we lay
we mimed a body
of water. It was
this or that way
with
the dead and we
were them. No
one
worried which...
Millet beer made
our legs go weak,
loosed
our tongues. “The dead,”
we
said, “are drowning
of thirst,” gruff
summons we muttered
out loud in our
sleep...
On Antiphon Island
On Antiphon Island they lowered
the bar and we bent back. It
wasn’ t limbo we were in albeit
we limbo’ d. Everywhere we
went we
limbo’ d, legs bent, shoulder
blades grazing the dirt,
donned
andoumboulouous birth-shirts,
sweat salting the silence
we broke... Limbo’ d so low we
fell and lay looking up at
the clouds, backs embraced by
the
ground and the ground a fallen
wall
Song of the Andoumboulou: 55
Carnival morning they
were Greeks in Brazil,
Africans in Greek
disguise. Said of herself
she
was born in a house in
heaven. He said he was
born in the house next
door... They were in hell.
In Brazil they were
lovebait.
To abide by hearing was
what love was... To
love was to hear without