Osa Calisthenics
1 of 133.
Adorned
with rusty brown and silver
chains on his strong slender wrists,
similar to the bracelets his great
great great great grandson
wears, before
the awkwardly tall and thin
Texan jail guard drives
the surprisingly long poisoned porcupine spine
into his, and then flips the heavy light switch,
sending lines of blue light into, and out of, his body.
His ghost, passes the wet,
bleach soaked washcloth on his bald black scalp,
rushing to link up with the other ghosts,
with rust clinging to their wrists,
not from charm bracelets lovingly made by little girls for little boys,
quivering,
as all 133 did,
as they approached their Titanic,
their Ark.
2 of 133.
She had long droopy breasts,
not perky like a teen girl,
in a porno lick,
but not flabby granny-breasts
not deflated balloons,
nipples still succulent,
with a wide dark-brown areola,
perfect radii.
This is what drew Drew to her,
not too fast to pursue,
not too old to love,
by force,
till she bled,
down there,
or plead,
in dread,
or begged
not that he cared.
Three months away from home,
at sea,
sleeping on feces-
covered floors,
has driven him, everyone, mad,
not angry, but
crazy.
My response
Really like where you are going especially as a black man I can relate to this experience. What I would like to see is a little bit more showing than telling: play with the colors of brown and silver in the beginning describing the chains, like in the poem about the rattle snake “noonday hillside” how can we start to question the temporality of the period you are writing about with new crashing’s of language. Also you have a line about the ghost passing the wet beach, do you think that the beach was just a beach, I think that you have room to create this alternative universe for the slave, while still being very real.
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