Читать книгу Dangerous Goods - Sean Hill - Страница 13
ОглавлениеBAHAMAS VOYAGE: MEDITATIONS ON BLACKS ON BOATS
Day 1
Up the gangway of the Big Red Boat
the SS Atlantic
white, red, and blue
banners and streamers
A colorful crew croons along
“The Star-Spangled Banner”
Accents thick sing-songy high
and guttural low as the boat
leaves port out to sea traveling slow
Day 2
A cruise to the Bahamas
on the 4th of July
occasioned by a family reunion
Below decks cramped in with
my little brother and a complimentary
bottle of champagne
The champagne goes down
The water on-board briny that of coastal cities
port towns to which slave ships made their rounds
Day 3
On deck in the sun
headphones on listening to
Charles Mingus: Town Hall Concert
Two songs “So Long Eric”
and “Praying With Eric”
After the first they clap
and Mingus introduces:
This next composition was written
when Eric Dolphy explained to me
that there’s something similar
to the concentration camps once in Germany
now down South.
The only difference being
they don’t have gas chambers
and hot stoves to cook us in
yet.
He continues:
So I wrote a piece called
Meditations as to how to get some wirecutters
before someone else gets some guns to us.
Conflation and conflagration
Day 4
On a slave ship in the hold below decks
Barely enough room for burial—squeezed
in tight like a coffin too small—surrounded
by others, sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers
like books shelved—handsomely bound
in black—volumes in an ongoing travelogue
Day 5
“I was born”
Black and bold
sprayed on a concrete mooring block
on the pier
A stock line
the “once upon a time” of Slave Narratives
They were born in America
Day 6
Framed by the porthole’s red rim
two blues meet
Waves rise redundant undulant
a cat’s hackles—deep blue
(of brand new jeans he buys for the label)
indigo that was king before cotton
Day 7
Bombay Sapphire I bought duty free
in a bottle the clear blue of the water
at a Bahamian beach
does not comfort me.
