Poetry

The fields of Rolesville belong to my kinfolk, dead and alive. 

tidal networks of black people cross
                                                   the road 
a Walgreens and pizzeria we 
follow as they walk

I still don’t know if Jesus was the dog or Jesus

See Jesus        doesn’t make himself

Apparent like I might have thought he would’ve

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This is not my making any ecstatic,

sleep-deprived screed

“Think,” Aretha Franklin and Ted White, Aretha Now, Atlantic, 1968

How a fuchsia blouse becomes
bougainvillea, or
a pair of greyhounds staggers
into abstraction, zigzag

Primitive angiosperm, genus 
prior even to bees,

When the fledgling fell 
from its nest, by meager attempt,
by pinwheel descent,
and lay, unguarded,

Famously late, light reaches us
eons past its own extinction,

Vendors approaching men with
women, holding out a solo rose, long-stemmed