Two POEMS
Leila Abeni Jackson
The Banjo Lesson
Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1893
Someday I’ll own this instrument and my body too,
if I can manage it. One without the other can’t make sweet music.
Who knows from whence it came? Who cares? We own it,
he and I, these hands, this tune, this repeat music.
When I mess up I mess up good, my blues going greens.
Be still, he says. Hear that. It’s your heartbeat music.
This is Blue Ridge, so I face forward. Here, I prove
I can hold him gently. A labor far from cracks of beat music.
I smack the drum. His white-capped widow’s peak points down,
a mountain looming: patience, snow-filled heat, music.
As a boy, Christ may as well have been a dream for bigger cities;
still now, in church, I close my eyes if only to meet music.
Momma once said he so quiet because song speak for him. Sometimes,
by the well, I hear him humming with the water’s offbeat music.
Consider immortality. It’s in the air, these days. My father crossed
that river years ago, bequeathed the butter-yellow sun his complete music.
When I mess up I go still, listening to the singing strings.
Wherever it came from, I drum the drum, my upbeat music.
When the tune finds his unworked hands, someday he’ll own
this instrument and our bodies too; a blessing. What bittersweet music.
Library of Crania
And good morning. And good morning. And I have some teeth
for you. Or you could call them that, these dice, and yes you may roll them, I have plenty more
where that came from. It doesn’t matter what they are: pebbles, osseous
eyes, or just my knuckles I forgot
to come back for—no, it doesn’t hurt, and yes,
they are yours. And, yes, about the bells,
here they mark time
not by ringing, but by creeping forward on their spindly legs.
You should know how it felt, keeping time.
Like how a vulture circling with no target impatiently waits
for some aortic or carotid body to resign. In the static chastity
of oil palms, in this world of white, there is nowhere I would rather be
than on a cheap desk in some med student’s cluttered
apartment, separated from my neck,
or you could call it that, these fossils
for a newer thing,
and yes you may touch them.
Otherwise, what was the point? Beads, hands, knives
and their hot breath--
another way to look at time, I suppose,
though crude. I have better methods:
swelling, singing, gently kicking the wall to announce my presence
in a room.
Before you knew me, this is how it was. Porridge
sighing steam, love in the guest-house.
He washed my waist with bare hands, and when he found something there,
we brought it to our small ears and listened like children
for the sound of the ocean.
We kept time like kites trying to be birds—full of song, ashamed of nothing, despite.
Then like architects. Stony, towering, looking up
to brush clouds out of the path of genius.
It’s not about time, though. It’s not about love or loss
or even teeth. Some things just have no meaning without skin.
Some maps will stay silent as you hold open their legs,
biting their knuckles so as not to scream,
the way a flint hints at fire
but a match hints louder.
Soon, a forgetting.
Soon, snow. The sky stuffing the mouths of bells with white,
sharpened dice glowing in a neat line.
You’ve seen this before—the way a blizzard makes
the whole cacophony quiet. So I dream of breakfast
at the rickety kitchen table. I dream of white pebbles.
I dream of my neck,
and good morning
and good morning, and I have some tea for you.
Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1893
Someday I’ll own this instrument and my body too,
if I can manage it. One without the other can’t make sweet music.
Who knows from whence it came? Who cares? We own it,
he and I, these hands, this tune, this repeat music.
When I mess up I mess up good, my blues going greens.
Be still, he says. Hear that. It’s your heartbeat music.
This is Blue Ridge, so I face forward. Here, I prove
I can hold him gently. A labor far from cracks of beat music.
I smack the drum. His white-capped widow’s peak points down,
a mountain looming: patience, snow-filled heat, music.
As a boy, Christ may as well have been a dream for bigger cities;
still now, in church, I close my eyes if only to meet music.
Momma once said he so quiet because song speak for him. Sometimes,
by the well, I hear him humming with the water’s offbeat music.
Consider immortality. It’s in the air, these days. My father crossed
that river years ago, bequeathed the butter-yellow sun his complete music.
When I mess up I go still, listening to the singing strings.
Wherever it came from, I drum the drum, my upbeat music.
When the tune finds his unworked hands, someday he’ll own
this instrument and our bodies too; a blessing. What bittersweet music.
Library of Crania
And good morning. And good morning. And I have some teeth
for you. Or you could call them that, these dice, and yes you may roll them, I have plenty more
where that came from. It doesn’t matter what they are: pebbles, osseous
eyes, or just my knuckles I forgot
to come back for—no, it doesn’t hurt, and yes,
they are yours. And, yes, about the bells,
here they mark time
not by ringing, but by creeping forward on their spindly legs.
You should know how it felt, keeping time.
Like how a vulture circling with no target impatiently waits
for some aortic or carotid body to resign. In the static chastity
of oil palms, in this world of white, there is nowhere I would rather be
than on a cheap desk in some med student’s cluttered
apartment, separated from my neck,
or you could call it that, these fossils
for a newer thing,
and yes you may touch them.
Otherwise, what was the point? Beads, hands, knives
and their hot breath--
another way to look at time, I suppose,
though crude. I have better methods:
swelling, singing, gently kicking the wall to announce my presence
in a room.
Before you knew me, this is how it was. Porridge
sighing steam, love in the guest-house.
He washed my waist with bare hands, and when he found something there,
we brought it to our small ears and listened like children
for the sound of the ocean.
We kept time like kites trying to be birds—full of song, ashamed of nothing, despite.
Then like architects. Stony, towering, looking up
to brush clouds out of the path of genius.
It’s not about time, though. It’s not about love or loss
or even teeth. Some things just have no meaning without skin.
Some maps will stay silent as you hold open their legs,
biting their knuckles so as not to scream,
the way a flint hints at fire
but a match hints louder.
Soon, a forgetting.
Soon, snow. The sky stuffing the mouths of bells with white,
sharpened dice glowing in a neat line.
You’ve seen this before—the way a blizzard makes
the whole cacophony quiet. So I dream of breakfast
at the rickety kitchen table. I dream of white pebbles.
I dream of my neck,
and good morning
and good morning, and I have some tea for you.
Leila Abeni Jackson is a proud D.C. native and a Pushcart-nominated Harvard graduate with a degree in English and History of Science. Her work appears in the Harvard Advocate, Rattle, Sixteen Rivers Press, and elsewhere. She is the former poetry editor of the Harvard Advocate and her most recent work includes her senior thesis, Uncharted Song, a poetry collection which explores Blackness and the medical body through time.