For David
at Baptist Hospital
Each week, you tell me you want to write
but erasing is what you do. Your fingers
rushing across the white lined paper, rubbing
marks away as a Dad brushing
grass from his young son’s jeans or hair after missing
a football, midair. Tell me, are you the son or the father?
Or do you feel as neither, here, surrounded
by strangers poking and pulling
you
for blood while I sit with the poise and beauty
of poetry folded on my lap, across from it all –
the tray of half eaten food, the roar
of monitors speaking for you?
I see you wanting to write though erasing is more
of what you do. Holding my breath like you,
needles approaching your arm, I am waiting
for a word you will find safe.
Any word
you say is fit to stay. But if you must
brush it away, let it be
one I can catch for you
midair.
- Jacinta V. White
(What Matters, Jacar Press, 2013)
at Baptist Hospital
Each week, you tell me you want to write
but erasing is what you do. Your fingers
rushing across the white lined paper, rubbing
marks away as a Dad brushing
grass from his young son’s jeans or hair after missing
a football, midair. Tell me, are you the son or the father?
Or do you feel as neither, here, surrounded
by strangers poking and pulling
you
for blood while I sit with the poise and beauty
of poetry folded on my lap, across from it all –
the tray of half eaten food, the roar
of monitors speaking for you?
I see you wanting to write though erasing is more
of what you do. Holding my breath like you,
needles approaching your arm, I am waiting
for a word you will find safe.
Any word
you say is fit to stay. But if you must
brush it away, let it be
one I can catch for you
midair.
- Jacinta V. White
(What Matters, Jacar Press, 2013)
To Mocksville
“Around 1824, Jesse Clement had quite a plantation that covered a large portion of what is now South Mocksville. This was the year he built a new residence in keeping with his station in life and the tradition of well-to-do Southern people. It is a house that still stands today.” -- Mocksville Enterprise-Record, May 26, 1967.
Your unnamed roads and unpaved paths
stuffed gravel in my throat;
hid the stories behind my voice
I would cough up the following autumns.
Nights I would cry in my dreams
of hearing crows and seeing ghosts.
Years later who knew I would return--
an adult looking for birthrights.
Surprised to discover bamboo roots
growing like orphans on acres
surrounding my grandparents’ home
three miles from the plantation they never spoke of--
its name at the tip of our family tree.
I've returned to find your land nearly impotent.
Compromised tree limbs too weak
to direct where I should walk, search, pray.
A tumultuous tide rises within me as I stand
bruised and naked on your bloodstained back.
I weep seeing you buried underneath secrets and modernity:
no monuments stand to tell the truth,
no stones left for me to gather,
no rivers running for me to dip
my shame and regret.
Your roots spread alongside railroad tracks
wedded to knee-high grass.
My breath remains evidence of a previous union;
and it is I who want to be taken in your arms,
admitted to that there is some kind of love you hold
for me and from me.
Until then, your bamboo will never grow as high as the crow flies.
- Jacinta V. White
(Press 53 Open Awards Anthology, Press 53, 2008)
“Around 1824, Jesse Clement had quite a plantation that covered a large portion of what is now South Mocksville. This was the year he built a new residence in keeping with his station in life and the tradition of well-to-do Southern people. It is a house that still stands today.” -- Mocksville Enterprise-Record, May 26, 1967.
Your unnamed roads and unpaved paths
stuffed gravel in my throat;
hid the stories behind my voice
I would cough up the following autumns.
Nights I would cry in my dreams
of hearing crows and seeing ghosts.
Years later who knew I would return--
an adult looking for birthrights.
Surprised to discover bamboo roots
growing like orphans on acres
surrounding my grandparents’ home
three miles from the plantation they never spoke of--
its name at the tip of our family tree.
I've returned to find your land nearly impotent.
Compromised tree limbs too weak
to direct where I should walk, search, pray.
A tumultuous tide rises within me as I stand
bruised and naked on your bloodstained back.
I weep seeing you buried underneath secrets and modernity:
no monuments stand to tell the truth,
no stones left for me to gather,
no rivers running for me to dip
my shame and regret.
Your roots spread alongside railroad tracks
wedded to knee-high grass.
My breath remains evidence of a previous union;
and it is I who want to be taken in your arms,
admitted to that there is some kind of love you hold
for me and from me.
Until then, your bamboo will never grow as high as the crow flies.
- Jacinta V. White
(Press 53 Open Awards Anthology, Press 53, 2008)
To learn more about Jacinta's books Resurrecting the Bones, published by Press 53, 2019, and broken ritual, Finishing Line Press, 2012, click here.
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