Sunday Poem

Deliza Spend the Day in the City

Deliza drive the car to fetch Alexis
running from she building past the pickets
make she gap tooth laugh why don’t
they think up something new they picket now
for three months soon it be too cold
to care

Opposite the Thrift Shop
Alexis ask to stop at the Botanica
St. Jacques Majeur find oil to heal she
sister lying in the hospital from lymphoma
and much western drug agenda

Deliza stop. Alexis running back
with oil and myrrh and frankincense and coal
to burn these odors free the myrrh like rocks
a baby break to pieces fit inside the palm
of long or short lifelines

Deliza driving and Alexis
point out Nyabinghi’s African emporium
of gems and cloth and Kwanza cards and clay:
Deliza look.

Alexis opening the envelope to give Deliza
of faint gray copies of she article on refugees
from Haiti and some other thing on one white
male one
David Mayer
sixty-six
a second world war veteran
who want America to stop atomic arms
who want America to live without the nuclear death
who want it bad enough to say he’ll blow
the Washington
D.C. Monument into the south side of the White House
where the First White Lady counting up she
$209,000 china plates and cups and bowls
but cops blow him away
blow him/he David Mayer
man of peace
away
Alexis saying, “Shit.
He could be Jesus. Died to save you,
didn’t he?”
Deliza nod she head.
God do not seem to be entirely dead.

by June Jordan
from the
Norton Anthology