Photo credit: Ramsey Mathews.
“I Can’t Breathe.”
Eric Garner
O beautiful for spacious skies,
His tongue
For amber waves of grain,
Four-hundred-year motto
For purple mountain majesties
Of murdered black men
Above the fruited plain!
Arms scissor-wing & slice July air
America! America!
Chokehold empties his chest
God shed His grace on thee
& paints his sky bone & sinew
& crown thy good with brotherhood
Yaw & pitch rush out of him
From sea to shining sea!
Like a stain on cracked concrete
O beautiful for pilgrim feet,
Or wicked stinging nettle
Whose stern, impassioned stress
He will fly
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Above thunderclouds of racism
Across the wilderness!
Where selling untaxed cigarettes
America! America!
Does not equal the cost of a life
God mend thine every flaw,
His eyes know
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
This is reality
Thy liberty in law!
Frederick Douglass, “When justice is denied
O beautiful for heroes proved
Neither persons nor property will be safe.”
In liberating strife,
One cop, judge-jury-hangman
Who more than self their country loved
The cult of alt-right white nationalism
& mercy more than life!
The YouTube video of his death
America! America!
This is not a jury of peers
May God thy gold refine,
No guilty murderous officer
Till all success be nobleness,
A twenty-second death row on video
& every gain divine!
Eric’s eyes have seen the glory
O beautiful for patriot dream
Of the coming of the Lord
That sees beyond the years
His emancipation plea
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Fails in a puddle of himself
Undimmed by human tears!
Intolerance cuts deeper than knives
America! America!
Fatal freedom in his eyes
God shed His grace on thee
His litany of loss eleven times
& crown thy good with brotherhood
“I can’t breathe.”
From sea to shining sea!
Eric’s truth marches on.
Sarah's Great Grandmother's Crèche
Weeks before the moving truck transports
Sarah from Austin to San Diego, she follows
her mother’s lead when culling the cargo. Sarah drinks
white zinfandel & lobs cheap dishes
over her shoulder to disintegrate
on the brick kitchen floor.
Years ago, during the family’s fifth Army
transfer of three daughters, a dachshund
& a husband stationed in Germany, her mother
shattered dishes, danced a Texas
two-step & wept. Sarah bubble
wraps mom’s porcelain,
the brass lighthouse lamp of two boyfriends past
& her father’s golden eagle lamp. She marks
boxes with Stuff, Kitchen, Office, Bathroom, Vibrators,
& Etc. Stuff contains rambling journals
started twenty years ago when at six
she wrote her first short story
about the rapture & a talking frog. She never reads
her stories to anyone, especially her two sisters.
To the homeless woman near the railroad bridge,
Sarah gives a midnight-blue down comforter,
a white night-gown & her favorite
yellow bath towels imprinted
with red pigeons. Under a strawberry moon, she perches
on the front porch the three two-inch tall Buddhas
that held dominion over her apartment -- one soapstone
big belly Gautama, one cobalt guy seated
in the lotus position, one a wandering
jade monk with a tote sack slung
over his shoulder. All three disappear during a sluggish rain
before sunrise. Single now, Sarah doesn’t worry
about divvying furniture. The kitchen table & two unmatched
chairs wait on the curb after no sale at the garage sale.
Free. Boyfriends & throw away furniture
can be purchased anywhere, but the California king
is too compatible after hours of sex, naps & reading
& easily packs sideways against one wall
in the U-Haul. After her father’s heart attack, she felt
like the Honor Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
Respectful. There must be value in Black
Widow’s orange label, Uriah Heep’s Vertigo Swirl
& the six apple crates full of platters. A red, white
& blue arm cast signed by Evel Knievel.
Two Ken dolls, one as the Cowardly Lion & one
as Nicolai of the Russian military. Dad’s shaving kit,
his Korean War uniform & the Owner’s
Manual to his ’48 Roadmaster Buick. One Craigslist
collector claims he also fought in Korea. She doesn’t want
to haul her father’s ballast, so she keeps dad’s
shaving kit, the Buick manual & a picture of her father
& pregnant mother standing on a Key West bridge.
In the black & white photo under horn-rimmed
glasses, her mother’s gothic lips caress a cigarette.
The one-piece bathing suit clutches her cantaloupe belly
pregnant with the baby brother Sarah never knew.
His death not the death of newspaper human interest. No cancer.
No drunk driver. No drive-by shooting. A stupid fishbone
lodged in his throat & a contagious hospital.
Her mother’s left-hand cradles the boy in her belly.
Her intrepid smile wrestles the sloe gin sorrow of her eyes.
Sarah sells her mother’s silver wedding rings
to a pawnbroker. She hides the heirloom photos on her iPhone
& never tells her sisters. Her addiction to books looms large
in the living room. Djuna Barnes, Thelma Forshaw,
Lydia Davis & Lyudmila Ulitskaya. There is William Faulkner’s
fury & Tom Clancy’s Red October abandoned by lovers
who desperately mimicked manhood’s panache.
Microbiology she almost flunked & Organic Chemistry
she took twice. Books make her feel smart, so Sarah stuffs
twenty boxes of books in the box truck & shuts the door.
Sarah’s great-grandmother’s crèche occupies
two wooden cigar boxes. The haunted theology full of birth
& death crumbles as she opens the first box
adorned with a faded yellow rose. The mythical dwelling
resembles a lean-to built by Bobcat Cub Scouts on their first
camping trip. One wall fallen & half the roof
missing. People & animals of the nativity populate
the second wooden box. A dog looks like a wolf. An ox
sports the horns of a steer. Something resembles
a camel. There are no swaddling clothes. Joseph & Jesus
disappeared into dust, but a silhouette of the Virgin Mary
remains. The wise men are smaller than Sarah’s
three discarded Buddhas, yet these patriarchs
are not rotund & happy. The sinewy magi, with bedraggled
beards & torn tunics, trekked across the maddening
desert on a rumor. After myrrh & frankincense, the three
no-longer-wise men loiter outside the ramshackle manger
with nowhere to go. Their ancient eyes glaze
with the clang of celestial ennui. Sarah tries to remember
the motivation for owning so many things. Why buy a Nordic
Track? The marketing is not that good. Why buy
two crock pots? Why buy two coffee makers, one Mr. Coffee
on sale at Target & one mail order, thousand-dollar Grindmaster.
Why buy a DeLonghi Magnifica espresso machine? Why buy
six cloisonné vases that never hold lilacs, real or plastic? Why?
by Ramsey Mathews
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