Smooth peals of Curtis Mayfield offer the story,

a warning that repeats too many times in cities

all over the world. The third person turns into

love letter because each time the song plays

in the heads of young players, they think

I didn’t have to be here. Curtis keeps singing

as if he’s pointing out that a game is always

set for losers and winners who look nothing

like Harlem. Expect the next move to be

a against a jaw, a 2 x 4 in a dark hallway,

an overdose of a friend who knows too much.

Curtis knows it’s all finance, the brutality

of paper and coins, and a chess board is easily

checked by whoever can afford the most knights.

 

Sad, quiet eyes and plotting minds populate portraits

in the world’s cities, but not one of them is a still life

until they turn the wrong corner on the wrong day

fallen through the trap door of alley and after dark,

maybe the same places where their mamas called

them from before streetlights brightened into curfew

above their once small heads. Streetlights excite

more than dim living room lamps and glimmer

on a roach’s back.  Each player imagines clothes

crisp as vines, Cadillacs with more shine than those

old streetlights, women like new leather coats

for every day of the week, while Curtis keeps ringing

in ears beneath taut brims holding each choice

as close as long lost relief pleading Let me be.

 

 

 

The blue tomcat stays glued to the radio

rolls the volume knob with his agile paw

adjusts to hear the pointed bulletin. White

mouse ingests explosives and escapes labs

that still exist. Repeat—the white mouse will

explode. Tom slams the window shut, peers

into the night’s blue toward tall hedges, fences.

He takes a break from taunting a brown mouse

who simply wants a corner, a fraction of home

that magnifies into palace when he’s swatted

from refrigerator into a wall as juvenile comic

relief. Jerry, the mouse, smacks his imprint

into the plaster, jiggles a shelf and tips loosely

capped shoe polish fit for first communion shoes.

The mouse lies in the milky pool, eyes closed as

Tom quivers through a radio warning. Be careful.

The white mouse will explode. Jerry realizes

and flaunts his liberty like a cheap cocktail ring

snaps his tail at the cat, compels Tom to smash

his own head beneath piano top, hammer head,

and fear, a dish served via satellite and flat screen

to domesticate people trembling indoors.

When Jerry splashes into dishwater, he loses

his white threat, dripping from his sienna fur.

Tom holds him up to a mirror, dropkicks him

from the front door, only to offer oblivious

welcome to the combustible rodent who hints

at the color of ashes.  Tom tries to launder this

white from the intruder he could drown until

the radio blares—The white mouse will not

explode. Tom becomes equal opportunity when

he opens the window for a goalpost kick, mimicking

the style of the conspicuously absent maid in kerchief.

Skies go black with technicolor firework blossoms,

so Tom discovers all mice are not separate but equal

or that one mouse might be more of a threat than

the other who cha-chas in your kitchen, so Tom

slowly states his admonition. Don’t you believe it.

 

Oddly enough, relief rises when he opens the door.

The steady thud of his steps, a falling night stick.

He holds me & my heart thumps like the pulse

of red & blue lights. The helicopter whir of anxiety

slows its chopping in my chest. When he’s late,

my searchlight does not go black. I breathe deeper

knowing that his rights have not been read.

His wrists cuffed only by crisp shirt & his father’s

bracelet, shiny as a revolved just cleaned.

When he says hey baby, hey honey, it is

a soft, bright absence of siren and megaphone.