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From ALL SOULS: Essential Poems by Brenda Marie Osbey (LSU Press, 2015)
All works ©2014, 2015 by Brenda Marie Osbey
REGARDING THE INTERMEDIATE TRAVELS OF CRISTÓVAL COLÓN
BOOK THE SECOND OF THE ADMIRAL:
i loved my father and my father loved me.
but it was never my dream to be a weaver.
i saw the bright ships sail
nor
do i know the first time i heard the word spices
but in that word
was magic
and gold
and more than gold
more than adventure
for there lay fame
bright and simple
as a clear day for sailing.
it was never my aim to be only a sailor.
nor was there nothing for me
in the turning out of cloths.
san salvador
marie galante
cap haitien –
such lands.
my own italy
even sea-going portugal
what did they know of such dreams?
minewas a soul already inclined
to greatness.
and when i went into the church there at la rábida
and looked upon the emblems blazoned there
i knew i had come upon my rights
and that good and catholic soldier isabel
could give more
than all the known desirings of
this heart.
and so i went to work.
my father was a simple man, a weaver.
he never could know the pull and heave of my heartstrings for the sea.
spices.
that was all my dream.
spices and the sea and my name writ
large in the great and handsome book of history.
will they recall, do you believe, how i all but alone, all alone really,
invented the notion of admiralty?
o seville city of a merchant’s dreams
city that was my undoing
city that never was
and i shall have my own city said i to my brothers as a boy.
laugh if you will
but i shall have my very own city
streets paved in gold and every spice and peppered thing
and i will share with you if only you help me to find my way
out on the sea.
yes the sea is the only way to achieve the unknown lands.
laugh if you will.
laugh if you must.
but help me get myway upon that sea.
and so began my life as a navigator.
a boy of fourteen i was
and ripe with it.
already a mariner at trade before i was a man.
and if the sea cannot make a man of you then nothing will.
for she is a hard mistress
and brooks no infidelity –
o santa santa fé
was all my prayer in those days –
i cannot tell the hardships that she taught me.
i would not tell you if i could.
and then i read old ptolemy’s cosmography
and learned to gaze the stars.
then i was sick with itas i never was sick before.
then planetary bodies made me hunger
just as the sea had made me thirst.
and i was mad for it
mad
and right they were to say it
but not in that manner.
what can they know of such dreams such hope?
land and sea
and land and sea
and everywhere savage hordes
half-naked gleaming
gleaming sweating reeking of humanity
and i lord admiral of those seas and more
who gave themselves to me
and gifts and foods besides.
who among you would not round the whole wide globe to be a king
where never man had ever yet set foot?
and pagans looked upon you as a god come from the sea?
and concubines of every heathen sort
swoon into death after bedding only some few times?
or else bearing onto the earth legs spread apart without a note of shame
and from the bloody mess of their loins a bastard son or daughter
heaved upon those dying breasts for some last glimpse?
worlds i tell you
worlds vaster than this strip you call the civilizing world.
such things i have seen with my own eyes.
such babes i have dandled and cooed.
who are you to judge me in the end?
who have never stepped beyond your fair genoa or minor tongue-tied lisboa?
who all will die some day of old age on a hard chair for your throne?
in spain they call me cristóbal the great.
my seed is scattered over islands you will never see.
there was a maiden
and yes i venture to call her so although
she was a true confirmèd heathen and right proud
her name some bright vexation of syllables she tried to teach me laughing
but i had other uses for my time and hers and named her isola.
isola
daughter of that pagan prince –
o isola of my broken seed
and i will die never knowing the brood you carried in your loins for me
and only lady dona felipa for my compensation.
for such is youth:
marry well and bring forth catholic sons.
when king affonso wrote to me
he did counsel me thus.
and i obeyed.
and i obeyed.
and not one piece of portugal’s gold ever crossed my out-turned hand.
yes such is youth.
around and around the world
and still i am longing for my city genoese
in my heart that i am
and woven of thick hardy stuffs
i carry on
as
even now
bright ships
bright ships
i close my eyes
and still the bright ships beckon the while
to farther and to ever farther seas.
isabel and her father confessor and their king –
it was they who made me admiral
sovereign of all the seas
after the goddamned moors had cost me years of revenues.
17000 ducats.
a great sum to me then.
and came a time i tossed as much in trinkets f
or the favors of a good and catholic king.
colonies
whole peoples have been named for my discoveries.
genoese you call me still?
no gentlemen.
you do not know me.
you do not know me and shall not judge me
ever.
around the world
around
the world
and no i never did find my fabled city.
she would be cast in gold and in copper
she would be redolent in ointments and in spices —
dark savage womb of the world my sea –
and i would name her isola
and gladly die within her walls
an old man i am and do not expect to see more in this life.
i am an old man.
at night i lie upon my chair discomfited and watch the heavens.
some nights they do not come to let me watch them.
and then i dream a young man’s dreams–
for i would name her isola.
yes and i would name her isola.
BOOK THE FIRST OF THE GUANAHANI:
the land we called yamaye
gave riches in metals and produce and spices and more besides.
and they had only to subdue
my father, prince of the caribs
a seafaring people of great will and character and beauty.
they say that when my sister saw the stranger
she begged our father to give him to her as a gift.
and being a prince of good wisdom he would not.
but my sister was spoiled and feted and the daughter of the prince.
what was to be done with her?
and so he gave the savage to her for a plaything.
and now here am i – guardian of the waste he strewed among us.
descended from the gods from the part of our mother
she chose to soil us
all of us with the stink of that old foreigner.
and she gave to her daughters bright foolish names –
marie galante, dominica, navidad, juana, española –
gibberish he cried out in drunken rages,
and she drunk with him
lurching from tobacco and aguardiente.
i see her even now
my mother’s daughter
no better than the whores they tell of in those lands
the two who ever did return alive –
ironical that she
should live to see them spread out dead before her – daughters every one –
and she persisting alone and in pain unto the end
the foul-smelling sores he gave her oozing down her legs.
at least she let him name her isola
so that perhaps we will one day forget how wide
the daughter of the prince
did spread her legs
to populate these islands
in the highest hours of the sun
while the gods were drowsing.
who would believe that
same disease that turned her womanhood to carrion
would also take away her sense?
“my daughters will be tutored at the court of the queen of expaña!” s
he was heard to rave some nights.
i heard her myself
and did not move to help her.
let her stew in it i heard myself curse her.
and felt no shame.
and went instead to comfort our father
who was taking a long time to die in those days
of the sickness in his
soul.
THE BOOK OF THE LAST OF THE GUANAHANI:the
arawaqi were our younger cousins by marriage between the gods.
and had i not been so desirous to put them in their
place i might have seen what the yxpañaro was plotting at my kingdom
but i was distracted by their impudence
as well as by the complaint of my elder daughter
who would go on until she had her way.
and now she is all but perished from it.
and i have seen in my visions
how i too am dying
slower than a
man of my stature
ever was meant to fall.
as the arawaqi say
the gods are making great feasting on my livers and my heart.
and i have come to the end of days
and now must ask
my younger daughter
to set me free.
every day i search her eyes for it.
and every day she shields herself from my sight.
is it love that binds her from the quest?
or hating desire for vengeance?
for foolish as was guantanamexe
as serious is guanaguahana.
surely no man of my stature ever was
meantto be brought low before those others
whose fathers served my fathers
in the oldest house of the gods
before there was
time or the history the yxpañaro wept so for.
my soul is too great to fall so low.
CODICIL OF THE WARRIOR QUEEN:
the day i cut the heart out of my father and ate it live
was the day i became the warrior of my own soul.
and when i held my sister’s portion out and she refused it raving
there was not a moment’s pause until i put the machete to her
and threw the rotting shell of her from the mound.
they call us flesh-eaters?
i will show them the better.
for ihave consumed the breaking heart and gizzards of my old father.
they were pierced with fibers of repentance and remorse.
it has made me valiant.
and it has made me pure.
now i am sitting squatting waiting the stranger’s return.
now is the time of sacrifice and of destiny.
now i wait to see
another ship of strangers
carrying other evils from other lands.
i squat in the shadows of my green kingdom
guanaguahana
last daughter
of the last lord
of the guanahani
of the race of the gods.
and around and around
this old old world the
bright ships sail
the bright ships sail
bright ships
sail.
SLAVES TO THE CITY
we stand in line to receive our daily bread.
it has the taste of sand
like so much else in this country
where there is no sand.
we move along the red-bricked streets
all of one piece.
we stop from time to time
to stare at buildings.
we do not know
have never seen such riches
and such places – and so many –
for the storing up of riches.
we are numb.
we move about together – all of one piece.
we stand.
we stare.
we eat our bread of sand and then move on.
where are the young
the children
the very old
our holy men and women
and our saints?
where are our sacred objects?
the little gods to carry on our persons
now that the great god sleeps?
we do not ask these questions of one another.
we do not dare.
we know our own small piece of truth each one of us.
nor do we share such truths.
we look into one another's eyes and faces
read nation, gods, wars.
we ask ourselves who will betray us today and whom we shall betray and
for what cause?
we do not ask the things we need to know –
we do not dare.
we eat the bread of sand.
we move along the red-bricked streets
stare into faces –
nations, gods, and wars.
QU’ON ARRIVE ENFIN
(a tale in-progress)
1.
and so we arrive at last in our native land –
the earth itself marked by slavery.
up there, in the open air, the stink, the hot funk of hot blood
the rowdy rebel-niggers of the past.
funny, no?
how we always return to this—
the city, the life
that slavery built,
tales altogether invented
as told by historians, founding fathers, the church.
but we are sick and tired of lies, dirty tricks and fraud,
we are sick of tales and of historians
sick of indigo, tobacco, rice and rum
we are sick of king-cotton and sugar cane
sick of it all
and can only wish hard-hard-hard
that the lakes, the bayous, swamps large and small
will have swallowed it all
flooded
erased it all.
but then
we don’t bother about this, really
because there’s always (the chance of) hurricane.
therefore, down with the dealers in blood and in flesh
long live the conquering hurricane
long live the leveling swamp
long live the rowdy rebel-niggers and the bad little niggers as well.
let there remain not one single plantation to reek of the stench of roasted flesh-and-blood.
2.
and so i ask myself,
what would suffice?
and my answer,
nothing. not a single thing.
as long as ever i live nothing nothing nothing shall ever suffice it.
3.
used to be
a good while back
used to be t
hey’d chop heads over far less.
and how many bloody heads would have rolled back then?
All works ©2014, 2015 by Brenda Marie Osbey
REGARDING THE INTERMEDIATE TRAVELS OF CRISTÓVAL COLÓN
BOOK THE SECOND OF THE ADMIRAL:
i loved my father and my father loved me.
but it was never my dream to be a weaver.
i saw the bright ships sail
nor
do i know the first time i heard the word spices
but in that word
was magic
and gold
and more than gold
more than adventure
for there lay fame
bright and simple
as a clear day for sailing.
it was never my aim to be only a sailor.
nor was there nothing for me
in the turning out of cloths.
san salvador
marie galante
cap haitien –
such lands.
my own italy
even sea-going portugal
what did they know of such dreams?
minewas a soul already inclined
to greatness.
and when i went into the church there at la rábida
and looked upon the emblems blazoned there
i knew i had come upon my rights
and that good and catholic soldier isabel
could give more
than all the known desirings of
this heart.
and so i went to work.
my father was a simple man, a weaver.
he never could know the pull and heave of my heartstrings for the sea.
spices.
that was all my dream.
spices and the sea and my name writ
large in the great and handsome book of history.
will they recall, do you believe, how i all but alone, all alone really,
invented the notion of admiralty?
o seville city of a merchant’s dreams
city that was my undoing
city that never was
and i shall have my own city said i to my brothers as a boy.
laugh if you will
but i shall have my very own city
streets paved in gold and every spice and peppered thing
and i will share with you if only you help me to find my way
out on the sea.
yes the sea is the only way to achieve the unknown lands.
laugh if you will.
laugh if you must.
but help me get myway upon that sea.
and so began my life as a navigator.
a boy of fourteen i was
and ripe with it.
already a mariner at trade before i was a man.
and if the sea cannot make a man of you then nothing will.
for she is a hard mistress
and brooks no infidelity –
o santa santa fé
was all my prayer in those days –
i cannot tell the hardships that she taught me.
i would not tell you if i could.
and then i read old ptolemy’s cosmography
and learned to gaze the stars.
then i was sick with itas i never was sick before.
then planetary bodies made me hunger
just as the sea had made me thirst.
and i was mad for it
mad
and right they were to say it
but not in that manner.
what can they know of such dreams such hope?
land and sea
and land and sea
and everywhere savage hordes
half-naked gleaming
gleaming sweating reeking of humanity
and i lord admiral of those seas and more
who gave themselves to me
and gifts and foods besides.
who among you would not round the whole wide globe to be a king
where never man had ever yet set foot?
and pagans looked upon you as a god come from the sea?
and concubines of every heathen sort
swoon into death after bedding only some few times?
or else bearing onto the earth legs spread apart without a note of shame
and from the bloody mess of their loins a bastard son or daughter
heaved upon those dying breasts for some last glimpse?
worlds i tell you
worlds vaster than this strip you call the civilizing world.
such things i have seen with my own eyes.
such babes i have dandled and cooed.
who are you to judge me in the end?
who have never stepped beyond your fair genoa or minor tongue-tied lisboa?
who all will die some day of old age on a hard chair for your throne?
in spain they call me cristóbal the great.
my seed is scattered over islands you will never see.
there was a maiden
and yes i venture to call her so although
she was a true confirmèd heathen and right proud
her name some bright vexation of syllables she tried to teach me laughing
but i had other uses for my time and hers and named her isola.
isola
daughter of that pagan prince –
o isola of my broken seed
and i will die never knowing the brood you carried in your loins for me
and only lady dona felipa for my compensation.
for such is youth:
marry well and bring forth catholic sons.
when king affonso wrote to me
he did counsel me thus.
and i obeyed.
and i obeyed.
and not one piece of portugal’s gold ever crossed my out-turned hand.
yes such is youth.
around and around the world
and still i am longing for my city genoese
in my heart that i am
and woven of thick hardy stuffs
i carry on
as
even now
bright ships
bright ships
i close my eyes
and still the bright ships beckon the while
to farther and to ever farther seas.
isabel and her father confessor and their king –
it was they who made me admiral
sovereign of all the seas
after the goddamned moors had cost me years of revenues.
17000 ducats.
a great sum to me then.
and came a time i tossed as much in trinkets f
or the favors of a good and catholic king.
colonies
whole peoples have been named for my discoveries.
genoese you call me still?
no gentlemen.
you do not know me.
you do not know me and shall not judge me
ever.
around the world
around
the world
and no i never did find my fabled city.
she would be cast in gold and in copper
she would be redolent in ointments and in spices —
dark savage womb of the world my sea –
and i would name her isola
and gladly die within her walls
an old man i am and do not expect to see more in this life.
i am an old man.
at night i lie upon my chair discomfited and watch the heavens.
some nights they do not come to let me watch them.
and then i dream a young man’s dreams–
for i would name her isola.
yes and i would name her isola.
BOOK THE FIRST OF THE GUANAHANI:
the land we called yamaye
gave riches in metals and produce and spices and more besides.
and they had only to subdue
my father, prince of the caribs
a seafaring people of great will and character and beauty.
they say that when my sister saw the stranger
she begged our father to give him to her as a gift.
and being a prince of good wisdom he would not.
but my sister was spoiled and feted and the daughter of the prince.
what was to be done with her?
and so he gave the savage to her for a plaything.
and now here am i – guardian of the waste he strewed among us.
descended from the gods from the part of our mother
she chose to soil us
all of us with the stink of that old foreigner.
and she gave to her daughters bright foolish names –
marie galante, dominica, navidad, juana, española –
gibberish he cried out in drunken rages,
and she drunk with him
lurching from tobacco and aguardiente.
i see her even now
my mother’s daughter
no better than the whores they tell of in those lands
the two who ever did return alive –
ironical that she
should live to see them spread out dead before her – daughters every one –
and she persisting alone and in pain unto the end
the foul-smelling sores he gave her oozing down her legs.
at least she let him name her isola
so that perhaps we will one day forget how wide
the daughter of the prince
did spread her legs
to populate these islands
in the highest hours of the sun
while the gods were drowsing.
who would believe that
same disease that turned her womanhood to carrion
would also take away her sense?
“my daughters will be tutored at the court of the queen of expaña!” s
he was heard to rave some nights.
i heard her myself
and did not move to help her.
let her stew in it i heard myself curse her.
and felt no shame.
and went instead to comfort our father
who was taking a long time to die in those days
of the sickness in his
soul.
THE BOOK OF THE LAST OF THE GUANAHANI:the
arawaqi were our younger cousins by marriage between the gods.
and had i not been so desirous to put them in their
place i might have seen what the yxpañaro was plotting at my kingdom
but i was distracted by their impudence
as well as by the complaint of my elder daughter
who would go on until she had her way.
and now she is all but perished from it.
and i have seen in my visions
how i too am dying
slower than a
man of my stature
ever was meant to fall.
as the arawaqi say
the gods are making great feasting on my livers and my heart.
and i have come to the end of days
and now must ask
my younger daughter
to set me free.
every day i search her eyes for it.
and every day she shields herself from my sight.
is it love that binds her from the quest?
or hating desire for vengeance?
for foolish as was guantanamexe
as serious is guanaguahana.
surely no man of my stature ever was
meantto be brought low before those others
whose fathers served my fathers
in the oldest house of the gods
before there was
time or the history the yxpañaro wept so for.
my soul is too great to fall so low.
CODICIL OF THE WARRIOR QUEEN:
the day i cut the heart out of my father and ate it live
was the day i became the warrior of my own soul.
and when i held my sister’s portion out and she refused it raving
there was not a moment’s pause until i put the machete to her
and threw the rotting shell of her from the mound.
they call us flesh-eaters?
i will show them the better.
for ihave consumed the breaking heart and gizzards of my old father.
they were pierced with fibers of repentance and remorse.
it has made me valiant.
and it has made me pure.
now i am sitting squatting waiting the stranger’s return.
now is the time of sacrifice and of destiny.
now i wait to see
another ship of strangers
carrying other evils from other lands.
i squat in the shadows of my green kingdom
guanaguahana
last daughter
of the last lord
of the guanahani
of the race of the gods.
and around and around
this old old world the
bright ships sail
the bright ships sail
bright ships
sail.
SLAVES TO THE CITY
we stand in line to receive our daily bread.
it has the taste of sand
like so much else in this country
where there is no sand.
we move along the red-bricked streets
all of one piece.
we stop from time to time
to stare at buildings.
we do not know
have never seen such riches
and such places – and so many –
for the storing up of riches.
we are numb.
we move about together – all of one piece.
we stand.
we stare.
we eat our bread of sand and then move on.
where are the young
the children
the very old
our holy men and women
and our saints?
where are our sacred objects?
the little gods to carry on our persons
now that the great god sleeps?
we do not ask these questions of one another.
we do not dare.
we know our own small piece of truth each one of us.
nor do we share such truths.
we look into one another's eyes and faces
read nation, gods, wars.
we ask ourselves who will betray us today and whom we shall betray and
for what cause?
we do not ask the things we need to know –
we do not dare.
we eat the bread of sand.
we move along the red-bricked streets
stare into faces –
nations, gods, and wars.
QU’ON ARRIVE ENFIN
(a tale in-progress)
1.
and so we arrive at last in our native land –
the earth itself marked by slavery.
up there, in the open air, the stink, the hot funk of hot blood
the rowdy rebel-niggers of the past.
funny, no?
how we always return to this—
the city, the life
that slavery built,
tales altogether invented
as told by historians, founding fathers, the church.
but we are sick and tired of lies, dirty tricks and fraud,
we are sick of tales and of historians
sick of indigo, tobacco, rice and rum
we are sick of king-cotton and sugar cane
sick of it all
and can only wish hard-hard-hard
that the lakes, the bayous, swamps large and small
will have swallowed it all
flooded
erased it all.
but then
we don’t bother about this, really
because there’s always (the chance of) hurricane.
therefore, down with the dealers in blood and in flesh
long live the conquering hurricane
long live the leveling swamp
long live the rowdy rebel-niggers and the bad little niggers as well.
let there remain not one single plantation to reek of the stench of roasted flesh-and-blood.
2.
and so i ask myself,
what would suffice?
and my answer,
nothing. not a single thing.
as long as ever i live nothing nothing nothing shall ever suffice it.
3.
used to be
a good while back
used to be t
hey’d chop heads over far less.
and how many bloody heads would have rolled back then?
and so every time we hear the word “creole” –
or better still “le monde créole” –
or better still “le monde créole” –
the fetid breath of the slavers and their lesser merchantmen
and the great stench of their women taking their little whores’-baths
only every three days or so
and so what?
what’s it to us we ask ourselves from time to
time a thousand times over
what’s it to us?
used to be
used to be
once
upon a
time
4.
and i can not quite fathom it
all.
5.
what then is history?
hardly even fable
hardly even myth –
nothing but the lies repeated by masters and their henchmen
nothing but lines repeated ad nauseam
in order to memorize them well enough
in order to entertain themselves well enough
until time for slashing the throat of one of their negresses
only after having fucked her good and raw
oh it’s the factories
the accounting-houses
over there
just along the river
where they produce
neither grain nor sugar nor anything else –
the “social science” of slavery
Répétez s’il-vous-plait
Répétez s’il-vous-plait
Tous à la fois à la fois à la fois….
REQUIEM FOR A TALL MAN
(for Thomas Covington Dent 1932—1998)
and so they took your heart
broken breaking poor strapped and strangled
took it as they’d taken dozens, hundreds before
and tried to feed its own life’s blood back to it on the
sly.
who could have seen
beyond such clotted paths to loving
big enough if not for all the world
then surely all
this city
to run right through?
how connect
the many years of hurting
to be the thing you said you were?
to learn your own thing well enough to
have it
even a little
then pass it on?
on.
so they stapled you up the
way they do these days and sent you home.
"i'm so glad" you offered from your hospital bed that first afternoon
"so glad i never really did anybody wrong"
and you were afraid
the way only a good man can be.
they will say that you were greater
wiser
hipper
even taller than you were
just to say
or to avoid saying
the deeper thing.
we loved you far better than we knew or cared to know.
and you are not long enough gone
to help us through it anyhow.
there are tales the old people used to tell when the world was younger
more hungry
less fearful
of losing cool
of soldiers who came among us for a short time only
bringing peace.
does anyone here understand the proverbial moment of silence?
can we not always be testifying?
can everybody please just shut the fuck up about it?
death is a road.
and those we love and those we've loved not well enough
walk on it.
we carry them the little ways along we can
then stand aside
and watch them go
splitting memory and time
words like asunder
are useful in such moments –
slave ships in the distance –
centuries longer
nearer
than we care ever to have it said.
is it only we are older
more lonely and afraid
full up on casualties of living and the giving-up-ness of it all?
the people say your name
in atlanta and d.c.
new york and memphis
charleston, soweto, bayou goula and jackson
friends and near-friends
pleasure clubs and the holiest old dives
churches you never entered
except the briefest glance about
asking with that wayward ardent need to know:
are the people there?
are the people really in there?
juke-joints and side-alleys of despair
sidewalk bars and cafés
would-be variations on the same
are the people really in there
conjuring up your name
as if it meant something it never did
or could?
as if
conjuring you
somehow would bless their faces
sad, beshitted lives
and after all the rest
– much to your own belated dismay –
famous at last
in the times-picayune.
because we are here.
because sometimes sweet soldiers die foolishly in the middle of a summer's afternoon
stricken from us like – what? –
between one ragged heartbeat and the next jive step.
because somewhere
dahomey angels sing into the night
where?
somewhere a koura plays cool round purpled notes.
and eternal dusk.
and the sweetest blackest coffee ever roasted over flame
flows where?
crazy laughter and footsteps of every face we ever loved.
and the river connecting every road.
fields of cane strong as bamboo
yielding.
fields of indigo, cypress and rice
stands of palmetto
savannas and midnight sky
black as your very heart
and half as wide.
and there is where the people are
there
inside
a love so terrible and sure
sure as all get-out
that saints do step in congo-time
home to their one true city
like soldiers
in times of peace.
LITANY OF OUR LADY
our lady of the sidewalks
the pavements and the crumbling brick
the mortar rock and oyster-shell roads
our lady of sorrows and sadnesses
of intolerable agonies tolerated daily
of drifters grifters scrappers and scrapers
our lady of dudes and dicks and pricks
of petty thieves and of whoremongers
of piss-swelled gutters
and dives
and the grimed over windows knotty-haired children peer through;
our lady
our lady of boys shot down in the dark
dying in open lots along lesser used roads leading out of town
of old men beneath interstates
sitting, standing, walking a block or so away and back;
our lady of lost and found and forgotten
cast-off ditched
of what was and never will be again
of aggrieved and bereft
accused indicted surrendered up to death
of old tar-colored women in plain or checkered housedresses
telling aloud their rosaries and rosaries
and rosaries of faith;
our lady of ladies
and of church-ladies-in-waiting
of young girls with hard uncertain breasts
and promises of school and school
and more school even than that;
our lady of go-cups and fictionary tours
cigar bars absinthe bars
of coffee houses open all night and churches closed all day
for-admittance-please-ring-bell-and-wait
and wait;
our lady of antiques dealers dealing in saints
in crosses, weeping cemetery angels, prayer cards
in crosses, weeping cemetery angels, prayer cards
in praline mammies, cigar shoppe indians
in dwarf nigger jockeys whose heads have been lopped off
and stand
one hand outstretched, one cocked at the hip
seeming not to be waiting but bargaining dealing
seeming not to be waiting but bargaining dealing
for the return of their heads
their heads their perfectly round perfectly lovely little nappy nappy heads;
our lady
our lady of tired buildings listing to one side
and brick-between-cypress posts that simply will stand
as houses themselves give way around falling-down stairs
leaving only a something
a memory of a structure
of spanish-tiled roofs and batten shutters
in a swamp
of a city
of ironworks and of plaster
o, lady lady our lady of
anything
at all
+
our lady of tired buildings listing to one side
and brick-between-cypress posts that simply will stand
as houses themselves give way around falling-down stairs
leaving only a something
a memory of a structure
of spanish-tiled roofs and batten shutters
in a swamp
of a city
of ironworks and of plaster
o, lady lady our lady of
anything
at all
+
Brenda Marie Osbey is a poet, essayist and librettist working in English and French. Her six books include her collected poems, All Souls: Essential Poems (LSU Press, 2015); History and Other Poems (Time Being, 2013); and All Saints: New and Selected Poems (LSU Press, 1997). The first peer-selected poet laureate of Louisiana (2005–2007), Osbey is a native New Orleanian.