Читать книгу Waterbaby - Nikki Wallschlaeger - Страница 12

for May Ayim (1960–1996)

The overseers are buried aboveground in containers that won’t

incinerate, and the workers who made the stones to fit their bodies,

dead from lung disease, are stalked by the heavy, wet coughs of their

bosses.

In the shaky global clay, the coral reefs are dying from pneumonia. My

grandfather packed crates of blank tombstones at the granite quarry

for a living and the sea being what it is speaks of these connections. I

know when I’m being haunted,

I know when I’m being asked. So we search together through the

trenches of buried papers, brown women shoveling, worried for the

health of our backs. We are a bouquet of spines pressed into the

dirt floor, gathered in strength for you, so you can rest here without

loneliness.