Poetry
LaDavid
LaDavid
For Sergeant LaDavid Johnson
Disembodied. I think of the witch who chopped up her brother throwing the carmined
flesh into the water to slow her father’s armada plowing the waves without an
outboard motor It wasn’t sorcery just craft Braving the sharks here and there they
collected each limb without the blood to assuage the young man’s spirit to mollify
his father’s anger if not the gods’ Did the brother give up his life willingly for her
America or was it terrifying that death would arrive not so unexpectedly at his blood
sister’s hands They lost the quarry but carried him home glum under black sails
nonetheless the body was properly entombed reassembled like the broken, artificial
borders of territory made whole only from the eyes of space Like yet another torn
deity
I think of the young widowed wife who was warned like Pandora not to open the coffin
lid or else truth would escape lay waste to forests of lies She wanted an open coffin
like any black wife who leans on the Lord proof against the horror of what they did to
him whether white or black terrorists or police at home while the baby La’Shee within
nested fruit against her bone so that she and everyone would know it was him and
was he washed? Identified. Framed. the still, tortured face to the tearing, sorrowing one
perhaps fainting into the arms of the Nurses Auxiliary Instead she heard the words like
a hex pronounced even her husband’s name was written backwards and charred with
his tongue when he couldn’t recall it performing even before witnesses that he gave a
damn about a finger about a hand She will sooner know whether LaDavid will return
in the child’s face than what was returned in that coffin
I think what remains of LaDavid is the vibration in his name recalling both male and
female commander and not sergeant in two languages he was named because three
syllables in his mother’s mind was a whole new spell from the one that had quickened
him into being This was the only magic that created heroes and wheelie kings from
Miami and yet the dried, blood-wine pools and whitened trails echo the young widow’s
moans at the doorstep to his remains in Africa, in America constantly seeking why in
the cracked dust not even ours until only the lowly beasts and insects and questing
children the sons of temporary allies merely playing at the war around them can
bring the soldiers to find and gather the work of ISIS Bones that may have been fingers
bones that may have been toes bleached cartilage that was a nose or an ear become
evidence Catalogued. but in a much smaller box on a cotton pillow of how he died
piece by piece belying his badges and honors well celebrated for that moment and
sung.