RACHEL ELIZA GRIFFITHS

PROUDFLESH: A New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness

ISSN: 1543-0855

Issue 6 (2007)

- Sula, Be Soft Under Rock,
- Drinking Desire,
- Reba at the Funeral,
- Esther Courts King Barlo
- Parting

Sula, Be Soft Under Rock*

Robins fell along rutted roads, breasts
shuddering like pummeled fruits
from the plague of a woman’s mouth.
All over the Bottom, blood
bonded against its bondage.

When Sula returned, marked
with a hungry rose and red feathers
drifting from clotted clouds, a wild man
danced toward a mine of souls
where songs echoed like fluttering
bats. Shadrack, won’t you sing your Always.

If Sula pulled Ajax back from his skin,
the surprise itself killed her. Loam
overflowed upon the sheets where they
had writhed in their own glares, his sugarfunk
salted newer wounds. Old things, without flames, burst
into smoke.

What else but bittersleep, nothing but her slow
tired eyelids? Stiff robins beyond that boarded window
in the bedroom, soft twilight, softer tongues
of acid licking her organs. Love can kill
the flesh it craves.

She surrendered and swallowed the soil
of a man who had never meant more than a taste
of the earth. Poison this thing inside you
that dreams venom. Tomorrow your marrow
will cling to the boy you swung beneath the river.

In a dream Shadrack will return your green girdle
of leather. Rawhide matches the skinless
beasts, which beats both lust and misery.
Splay the valves of your heart, Sula, soft
as a mollusk’s body. Cling like moss to the underbelly
of stones, way beneath black rivers.

-- *For Toni Morrison’s Sula

Drinking Desire*

Never made me forget how hard life been. Never
made me smile until the amber-drunk fingers soften my jaw
& my dreams blur as paintings or a Southside midnight.

Never made me cold like this inside the skull of a building.
Never made a man walk by without breaking his neck
to look back. Never made my hips roll as though I could be sand,

sea, & star all at once. Never made me confuse the feel
of a brick or that the end of the gulp was soon coming.
Never made me say nothing bad about how my mama tried

to raise me. Never tried to blame my daddy for running off
with a yellow cattail woman. Never made me think Bigger hadn’t killed
that white girl. Never made me forget that I could always dance.

Never made me feel like a decent woman. Never made me think
the world see me any less than they already did. Never
made me think that Bigger wasn’t going to kill me

one way or another whether I had already been living
dead any damn way. Never tasted the barley
in a tall pint of beer with dinner. Never tasted the cherry

or the olive trapped between the ice. Never left my palm lonely.
Never worried about sleeping in a bed full of anonymity.
Never worried about him doing right by me. Never

saw a drink walk off complaining about my hair being nappy
or my ass being black as a cup of coffee. Never seen a drink steal anything
I was already giving away or giving up. Never saw a shot make a bullet

in my heart. Never seen a shot turn into a brick
& bash my skull. Hangovers condition the soul toward forgiving.
Never going forgive Bigger if I don’t freeze to death first.

Never going understand why trouble don’t taste good
as a nip of brandy. Never wonder why the snow fell
slower than rain or my tears when he put his thing

inside my don’t. Never saw a drink go into me
without me offering my hand or lips. Never seen
a drink hate itself for being what it was. Never

saw any labor that I turned away from for being too hard.
Never saw the burden of being nobody to them.
Never saw anything in the world that gave a damn

about anybody. You toast trouble it’s going toast you
right back with a hallelujah that taste like salt and mountains
& wheat. Leave a watermark if you hold on to it too long. Leave

you bruised if you love a man like that too long. That’s only if you can
still love anything you can’t swallow & taste its sugar right off.

-- *For Richard Wright’s Native Son

Reba at the Funeral*

Somebody’s been botherin my sweet sugar lumpkin.
Somebody’s been botherin my sweet baby girl.
-- Reba and Pilate, Song of Solomon

It ain’t about your God having his way.
It ain’t about the pews glistening under

the gone-breath of my child. It ain’t about black
people knowing more about true home-going.

It’s about the gray-dove silk touching skin
that can’t feel silk. Nothing’s amazing

about grace or dying. Quiet singing silks.
How young is silence.

It’s about a mother, empty and stitching
the lids of a child’s eye-sockets shut. It’s about throwing

out a broken tube of new red lipstick.
How old is the color black.

It’s about what I had to give her,
which that flying nigger took, calmly

as a dollar bill in a gutter. Pick dreams
away from my eyes like dust.

How many houses can grief need? Hagar was loved.
There’s room in that casket for me. I said loved. There’s straw

under her cheeks. Somewhere
between her neck and her shoulder

I could fit.

-- *For Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon

Esther Courts King Barlo*

“Wishes only make you restless. Emptiness
is a thing that grows by being moved.”
– Jean Toomer

Any man bring fire like King Barlo, after
Barlo, must have stolen it from him
or the Lord. Barlo gave me a tongue
of flame for my ears, deep down, deep
in my ears where virgins and their captors
sleep. Hear this: I’m burning
like a weeping bush. I’m calling for you,
Barlo. Not my Daddy, not Moses.
My bush is burning. I’m a woman
of old thorns, waiting inside the husk
of my body. I’m born through your inferno.
Ask him, Jesus. Ask Barlo about the holocaust
of niggers. O God tell them where
we put our bones when work-fields yellow
like a wedding veil.

Jesus has been awhisperin strange words deep down,
O way down deep, deep in my ears.

Glory? It’s far as stars, a beast of burden
men use when the world gets too big
and mule-eyes look back at them from lakes
and mirrors. I see how color beats me,
stole the gloss from beauty I could have had.
Barlo will give it back to me.
I’m throwing fiery dreams into the river, everything
I’ve got. Let it come back to Esther, if God pleases
to remember a pale girl who dreamt of fire.

Jesus has been awhisperin strange words deep down,
O way down deep, deep in my ears.

King Barlo, I tucked pearls and stones in my pocket.
Yellow skin doesn’t mean my heart is less
blacker, Prophet. Flames take me like they taking
you. My blues is a halo. These years I’ve waited
for you, Barlo, is enough to make Satan weep and dance.
You ever felt a halo round your finger? You ever heard
what burning grass cries to the field that holds
it captive? I came into that old place, burning
strange for you, for you to save me, Prophet.
Don’t think for two moments I’m beyond begging.

Jesus has been awhisperin strange words deep down,
O way down deep, deep in my ears.

-- *For Jean Toomer’s Cane

Parting*

Don’t you let Joe Trace forget
the harm he done to himself
even if he can’t feel nothing.

He ain’t got a right to kill love
after it kill him.

Beauty got a price.
Don’t you tell these women that?

Holding ears while these fools jump
from the blow of love and grease.

What his sorrow got to do with you?
I ain’t sad in death. I’m mad as hell.

Dixie Peach, Blue Magic, Red Devil
Dye. All those lyes.

Miss Violet, you past grown
and carrying on. My proud eyes
shut you out.

How much you give to sink your manicured
claws into my scalp? Touch the kisses
your husband left there like suds.

I see you from where I’m at.

How you getting into my chords, you
crawling through your beauty
bags, stepping low then lifting careful
ankles to fit my patent-leather
shoes.

Sometimes, Violent, don’t you hear
a river of laughter beneath dark strains
of jazz.

What that blueness do
to you, Miss Violet? Shuddering
your fingers through my black hairs,

parting the hips that never let you
or your husband inside.

-- *For Toni Morrison’s Jazz

Citation Format:

Rachel Eliza Griffiths. “Sula, Be Soft Under Rock,” “Drinking Desire,” “Reba at the Funeral,” “Esther Courts King Barlo,” “Parting,” PROUDFLESH: A New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness: Issue 6, 2007.