Angela Lockhart-Aronoff
FOR NOW
Yours and ours legacy on earth will be the first to go.
Old memories, moving past large oak trees with Spanish moss
hanging from their limbs, moss swaying like the tails of wild
horses or the ghosts of humans, sparkling on moonlit water.
Yours and ours will be lost in his-tory, and perhaps in her-story as well.
The folklore will grow into a hybrid of strange hanging fruit on a tree
swinging in some kind of northern snow. Some kind of southern rain. Some kind
of eastern wind blowing in from west in some kind of unbearable heat.
For now,
Yours and our strange patterns will be revealed slowly,
as the trafficked, the enslaved, the indentured, and those raped and kidnapped,
or those on boats fleeing something oppressive (holocaust, genocide, mass graves
on the grounds of an Indian school or on the grounds of the urban incarcerated, indoctrinated). Now happening just about everywhere on earth. More often than not.
Ask how the earth’s balances her energy.
Ask why the trees are missing in the low income areas.
Our intersectionality double consciousness is a synchronicity thing.
Phyllis was a dark human. Sold and bought. A book reading beast
of burden. A master in the art of self-censorship, quiet and noble,
without vanity. She could speak and write in the prized colonized tongue. Her celebrated, upper class tongue. Her early poems survived as her final poems were lost. Her children died. No stone marks her grave. She was human. Poet or not
Poems will unfold into this impossibility.
the dead malls have taken over suburbia as river water
rises beneath Wall Street those old the Munsee Lenape water paths,
seeping downhill into the avenues, into both sides of the underground
crumbling white walls facing subway platforms. Weeping river water
feeding black mold, while the tunnel people breathe this death waiting
for the express or local trains descending into all kinds
of decaying infrastructures under the East River. For now.
Decolonized and inspired work will arrive in our poems.
The way into this change is to reinforce our witness.
What if we are just getting started?
What if we are just yet to come?
What if we are everything dying forever?
What if we are just a choir singing.
For now.
NO VACANCY
I drive myself to write because driving
is a shifting process confident procedure
creative productivity in my hair
turning into the color of stardust
I write down my howling on the clean white page
that night on the interstate highway
just another no vacancy, no colored
hotel no blackbird singing in the dead of night
Changing gears Daddy drives on with caution
Far enough away to sleep just off the freeway
sound of the gravel crunching footsteps men approaching
flashing flashlights and metal hitting the glass
Family safe inside, locked down and trapped inside
Angry men try to pull Daddy out of the car
But Moses won’t let go of that wheel Wally Mae
won’t let go of the door of our locked cell
I stand up crying on the drive-shaft
Daddy what’s happening? Scared young trooper
on the right flashes his light on my face yelling
There’s three kids and a baby in the back seat
a moment of witness we all bare
flashlights go dark gravel sound of running away
angry men running off into the dark woods
Daddy still holds on to that wheel as Mama cries
by his side Three kids and a baby in the back
We drive on seeking our own kind in the green book
We drive on through the long Mississippi night
Into a hallelujah sunrise brand new white
1961 Pontiac Bonneville
We too dreamed singing America sleeping
in the back seat cradled under grandmama’s
handmade quilts flashback resilience starts at eight
flashbacks that drive me out of the white gaze
write without decision or smugness
write without reason or sparkling rhyme
Girl stories I learned to write for myself
drive my girl-child self to follow the mind
Resistance engaged in the war of art
My father said he always bought white cars
cause it’s easier to see and edit the dirt
Raisin
You
the tallest in your first-grade class
running up front from the back in record time to win the race singing
You were the only one
who got that horse trot dance rhythm right on that cold Spring sheets of rain day
that no playground day when
You
got called to the front of the whole class to trot for the others who could not would not trot like that
you know
the ones
in the pretty little dresses
starched stiff
little color wheel dresses
the ones
who would only move
to correct your ability to speak
spell or subtract
the ones who
would never look for you
during hide and seek nor touch
You
when they played tag
but made damn sure to stare
all up in the shade of your face
during history class
“You just growing up being the only raisin in the pound cake”
Grandmama Vermacy said
Come on over here let me teach you
how to work this here Gold Coast cotton
and with your hands
following behind your Grandmama’s hands
You
learned to stitch and patch
the math of the cloth
You
learned to discern
the tint and the tone
of how to reckon things differently
and question
the scraps of truth
presented as answers
that never adds up
Daddy
taught you to read
but in his Mama taught you to stich
and your Mama
taught you to write
You
winner of the race
the only miracle
in the pound cake.
Angela Lockhart-Aronoff is a poet, performance artist, hand quilter, and a social service subject matter expert for the state of New York. Born and raised on U.S. Air Force bases, Angela grew up in a family that lived and traveled across the United States and Europe. She identifies as a Geechee African-American via her father’s Mississippi heritage and Mother’s the Sea Island Corridor heritage, which spans South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. A graduate of New York University, Angela holds two master’s degrees, one in Educational Theatre, the other Rehabilitation Counseling. Angela and her late husband founded Living Lessons Inc. a non-profit educational theatre company, featured in the New York Times, Glamour Magazine, and the book Mega Trends for Women. Angela’s published poems live in two anthologies and a self-published chapbook entitled What is it You Think You See? Rice and Cotton (in progress) that will be her first book of poetry to be submitted for literary publication.
