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.