Sugarcane
I think daddy did love momma.
That night looking for her brother’s place
past the cotton mill this side of Cheraw
with rain smacking welts on the windshield,
she said she saw sugarcane.
She said sugarcane like it was
somebody’s name, like somebody
she knew from down home.
I looked back at the row of tall shoots
under a string of dripping lights
leaned against the wall
of a cinderblock service station
and before she could ask
he turned the Mercury around
and pulled into the lot
with wet gravel crunching
and popping under our tires.
He trotted back, drenched,
and shoved the sharp leaves
over the seat, shedding cold
rain on my sister and me.
He clicked open his pocket knife
and carved the tough stalk
down to pale seeping pulp.
We sat while heavy drops
pocked the car and crawled
down the fogging windows.
She bit into raw sweetness
and went down somewhere alone.
Was it that wide bleached field
surrounded by bony pines
in the flaking photograph–
the one with your mother smiling
in a white Sunday dress
and you, curling from the hard sun
into the crook of her arm?
Girl at the Clinic
You were a child of the state
from the Angel Guardian Home.
They took you when you stole
your foster mother’s ring.
I was a second-year social work intern
working in Flatlands in Brooklyn.
I watched you roll Play-Doh into gold
and make believe you had a million dollars
to buy your mother anything she wanted,
your real mother, on Staten Island,
who was gone on powder.
You drew her building over and over,
then painted it with all the colors
until there was only a layer of mud
that dried and cracked open.
You drew your face with a big circle,
a saucer open to the sky,
sifting heaven’s static
for a tiny message
with your name on it.
You drew me a picture
of a girl with a gift.
You were a gift to me.
You wanted to type a story
but gave up on words,
hammering the keys
until they jammed.
On my last day, I worried
how to say good-bye. Outside,
you found a broken flower
and planted it
in a hill of dirt.
Your small arms clung
to me as if I were the mother
you couldn’t hold.
*
You would be a woman now,
somewhere in New York.
I search the misspelling
of the African country
your mother named you for
and instantly your trail appears
from Brownsville to Bed-Stuy
and back to Staten Island.
And a link I can’t help opening–
"Fatal Shooting of Staten Island Teen.”
Relief. You’re only the relative
in the Eyewitness News clip
where police mark evidence
on a taped-off street in the projects.
You stand in front of candles
and posters on a basketball court
and look straight into the lens
your face and shoulders
lean and strong,
She was on her way
she never hurt nobody
it’s very sad,
long done with tears.