Disowning is the Only Treason
by Lee Sharkey
How sweet the world is when a young black woman with eyes of chocolate hums
as she irons your clothes. I result from this, the arrival of benignant happiness at
the house of angers, the inculcation of the other mother. For years I had her for
my own then reenacted the loss of her, finding her face in the faces of strangers,
in an instant silly with desire to follow her/him anywhere, finding her flesh in the
skin of a lanky Ethiopian come to America to learn how to make a revolution. I
could not tell him he was/was not the body of my longing for the mother
bequeathed me by the goddess of mercy, or that I would pull back from the brink
of his existence though I wanted his stories, disowning is the only, if he entered
by night he would spell me tales of his people, how they conspired against the
tyrant, I would become the displaced woman trekking across desert sands, would
become the human condition, too much for an off-white virginal Emily’s lace
dress sheet shrouded Sylvia P, and learn the nature of his desire, he readying
himself to shape the future of his country not to study courtship rituals of an
American bourgeoise, I might have loved him all the way out of my universe but
I was not enough woman to let black truth enter my body trying so earnestly to
be whitely beautiful and shied away from his loneliness, is the only treason,
loving rather his apparent composure, unwilling to bed down his longing
next to mine.
Show Boat
by Lee Sharkey
Quiet in the snow a memory lies there
Snow Face, pick up your cold cream, your tube of tar
Prepare the mirror for revelation
What has fallen onto your pale shoulders
A darkie wants your tongue
A tangled skein of race and gender. It’s a Jewish girls’ camp; in the musical, I’m
cast as Joe. The director traces slavery’s legacy in the song and dance on the riverboat,
the black chorus behind the white romance. When we listen to the cast
recording, Robeson’s “Old Man River” makes me tremble.
Snow Queen, a song of cotton
Open your throat and veil your eyes
With every step, necessity
Doubles you over, toting bales to the river
Where black skin slicks with sweat
In rehearsal, she’s harshest on me. I can’t take a step without her stopping the
action, revising my gait, my vowels. The low note’s not one a girl can reach.
Only before the dress rehearsal, while her fingers apply my makeup, does she tell
me she saw the actor I could be — This role’s as broad as the river, and you can
carry it. In the mirror, I see an old, black man.
Snow Fool, there is no entr’acte
When night has fallen and you’ve claimed the stage
Your blackness streams into the spotlight
Obscuring everything but rapt attending
Now the low note rumbles from your chest
I have become Joe, back aching, legs cast lead. All eyes are on my
solo; I stare into the pulsing dark. Paul Robeson stands beside me. My lungs
expand to reach the low note, lift the burden with my song. I will never recover f
rom this, no matter the sense of irony I will acquire, the shame.
The Izabel Songs
by Lee Sharkey
In the hall, a metal closet. No mirror hangs there — what is there
to see? Sensible shoes and a gray uniform.
I live on this set but the mirror does not reflect me. The venetian
blinds turn down at night to contain the nuclear family.
What draws my attention is the brown-skinned woman, the aura
of gold about her. She cleans, she dusts, she tucks the sheets under the mattresses.
I follow, padding from over the linoleum from room to room.
She appears from nowhere. Her ears are pierced and she belongs
to me. I take a moment to adore her, I am still greedy for her,
her velvet skin, her plummy lips — she leaves, the house goes dark.
At the park, where she watches
I balance around the rim of the fountain, jump, I am green and flying
free, I drop in a penny, we walk home in no hurry. She fits the key to the lock.
A wrist turns clockwise. A sleeve rides back.
There is no word as small as an instant.
I lay my hand on her hand. Why don’t I have beautiful brown . . .
like yours
Instant I see my skin.
I am, she is
ironing the father’s undershorts, the mother’s handkerchiefs, the
room smells of steam, the radio’s tuned to the top ten.
She sings along in a clear soprano.
I am the questioner curled in an armchair, eyes trained on her,
infant with rings through her ears, motherless child whose father
set out to sea, she takes me to places I have never been,
the colored streets of Baltimore, the blue seas of Cape Verde, the tenements of Providence
but not West Africa, nor the Middle —
Something’s troubling the story. I want the vocabulary: maid,
nanny, mammy, subminimum,
Mr. and Mrs. and Iz.
When you die, can I have your gold earrings?
Thirty years she cleans for the family, moonlights on the graveyard shift.
Body parts of G.I. Joes pass all night before her.
The father takes leave of himself.
The mother packs up, moves south.
The daughter escapes the house.
She mothers many. Her sisters’ children and their children’s
children. Always the new baby displaces the one before.
It became a family story, how the daughter loved her other mother, who sewed her a princess costume that did not win the prize,
the hours she spent stitching ribbon to satin and tulle.
The Call
by Michelle Lewis
A crumpled city
called, it wants its funneled
wind back.
Wants its throat of dust to unfurl,
fall like powder on its playing children.
A river beneath the Veteran’s Bridge
called, it wants its distance back.
Its troubled depth was not
for us to know.
Then the earth’s heart
dropped a dime, proposed to turn
its devastation in, sate
itself with new, wild soil.
It was some message.
We agreed to all the terms.
Wolves ate our various cancers.
You came to take your body back —
the barn coat you left on shore,
your cell, your weed,
the voice that said I’ve been poisoned
before you disappeared.
By a drink, an aching? We wouldn’t
know. Goats were sent to
clean the ground of thorns.