Nehassaiu deGannes, selections from Music for Exile

Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize Co-Winner, selected by the NEPC Board

Boston Bridge Works, 1927
 
On our left we have Narragansett Station
           See how red dominates the horizon?
                      Brick   Lights   Sky
 
Consider the three   upright    substantial
           our Moses   Nicholas   John   Notice at dusk
                      only the far one blinks (first) a warning
 
for birds or the dead  Slip off your shoes  Feel
           yourself rotting   wood   exhausted iron, oh that
                      saxophone sound  Well it’s not worth repeating
 
but wind takes up residence
           with power  You know gates latching  unlatching
                      shiver of light on rain soaked wire.
 
Folks whisper it’s steam riding these towers.  Me
           I’ve been walking this tour since 1763   The year Mary
                      Wamsley slipped a white-picket child into boiling water
 
Believe her blood lines the sky?  I know what’s not
           Escaped  Free  & her own children too.  Not negro-
                      mancy     Girl worked that case in high court
 
See for yourself  Step out one morning
           with just enough light  Red wanes
                      Axe ceases & Mary’s sweeping back concrete
 
broom like a cenotaph (semaphore you’d say)
           whisking saltwater  warning arrivals keep moving
                      No future at POINT ST. LANDING.
 
 
Wonder what that is?  Well the meaning’s as clear as
           clear as gold in a BENEFIT window  Funny how
                      sun’s a ventriloquist   tricks you into hearing
 
life where there isn’t any
           Now that wall’s like my friend
                      Has a house in Riverside
 
 
From her deck you can see
           one catalpa tree clear out to crippling water
                        (FRONT ST.’s downriver, hotels and all
 
Still she can’t fathom her neighbors:
           whole lot grown wild   heads with wings 
                        barring acquaintance with
 
hurricane swells
           Wonder did Columbus make of this place?
                        This is India Point   softly now
 
hindsight blesses land Tri-ni-dad
           Land  See there   Our own POWER ST. Trinity
                        Now what brings you to Providence?
 
Tracking one family’s greed.
           Pardon, you’re tracing your family tree?
                        so sorry  Wind’s got my ear
 
 

 
A Catch of Shy Feet
            Five Golden Shovels for Mary Wamsley
 
 
I
 
A catch of sky: slow-dusk tobacco leaves flagging the wind
like a field of zig zag turkeys, tangled,
trussed. Unable to fly.  Among
 
kettle screams, pots clanging like bells–––
I wring n’ chop. Backwards from fourteen. Then fourteen again.  There.
 
Safe in the ‘Not-Yet” of indentured birds of this world: ‘Free’ is
 
promised sugar on a mother’s lips. ‘To Free’ is the spiritual
task.  Chubby arms tug at my apron.  New laughter?
 
 
II
 
To
hoist him up to my hip? Steady his blue gaze with mine? Refuse
his baby-groping for my scarf, the knife, the
fire? To quiet the live racket.
 
To
clean his face of jam.  To unbutton my breast to his mouth. To mutter
the names of my girls into his oatmeal hair? No.
Down. Down to
the sea to The
Floor. Up? Oh little bird, I am caught in the master’s net.
 
 
III
 
Hands cracked.  Blade bright!
Still.  Alone in my lameness
to split freedom from
 
the bone of hard work.  How many years, shy feet? My
eyes have scoured this kitchen; shirking the beautiful
blade’s dis-ease.
  

IV
 
What stays me like Abraham?  The sacrifice at
last must be clean to the heart, to the
sparkling house, to the gods of this boy and the father-root
 
cause of all frightening unflappable things.  Oh, Bird-burdened hip, what of
mine? All gone to the neighbor’s stock. What of us? The
kettle?  The pot? The gap–––the welcome steam of its blackness?  Will
 
I unhinge his warp, his little harp of a
body from mine? I will buckle my heart’s wild
 
Down. Down.  Little crown. Little feet.  To bird your sweet inflammable
soul ‘to the ‘whirling-place.’ Down to the whole whistling lung, I must stuff.
 
 
V
 
I am fugitive, then pulse, then wind––
All my daughters’ hands tangled
in mine.  Saturate in sky among
the dizzy trees. We are free!  My skirt bells.
Oh, little flag surrendered to the water, There
will always be that knocking. An opening when a Door is
a boy is a boat. Yes, Courthouse, I carrion.  I Charon. I spiritual
exodus. Always my heart catches with his laughter.
 

Acknowledgments:
 
“Boston Bridge Works” first appeared in Percussion, Salt & Honey, The Philbrick Poetry Prize, Providence Athenaeum; and later in Crab Orchard Review (Special Issue: Due North) [17: 2] (Reprinted with permission of Providence Athenaeum.)
 
 
“A Catch of Shy Feet” first appeared in Music for Exile, Tupelo Press. It is a series of five Golden Shovels, the form invented by Terrance Hayes, in which one line from a Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem provides the final words for each of the new poem’s lines.

Nehassaiu deGannes is author of Music for Exile (Tupelo Press) and two award-winning chapbooks (Philbrick Prize and Center for Book Arts National Award.) A Caribbean diaspora interdisciplinary maker, she has enjoyed fellowships from Cave Canem, RISCA, Vermont Studio Center and Assembly Theater. She lives in NYC and teaches at Princeton.