ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Beth Boylan is a poet and English teacher at a private high school. Raised in Westchester County, NY, she now resides near the ocean in New Jersey, where she seeks out Nature, writes, and daydreams about where next to travel. Beth holds an MA in Literature from Hunter College, and her poems have appeared in a variety of journals, including Apeiron Review, Chronogram, Cooweescoowee, Dying Dahlia, Gyroscope Review, Jelly Bucket, Oyster River Pages, and Whale Road Review.
Poets Resist
Edited by Len Lawson
August 14, 2020
Edited by Len Lawson
August 14, 2020
Cento in Memory of George Floyd
A dead child dragging his shattered black face off the edge of my sleep
blood from his punctured cheeks and shoulders
is the only liquid for miles
bodies run with ink dark blood. Blood pools in the pavement’s seams,
blood & its endless screaming or singing or whatever people do when their village burns again,
the blood & its clever songs
bits of face spilling onto some ground. this dissonant vengeance of disfigured shapes.
back slaps, bootkicks to the ribcage, spleen, and pancreas, ashy turned ash turned ache
with bags under eyes for forgetting.
Can you put yourself in the other’s position, prone and defenseless?
It drove and breathed on him: and touched him. In that breath the fume of pig foot…
day is lit by a covetous rage, a fist swollen with a hunger for the freshest passages of air
the temperature of blood, quivering like a mouth in mourning.
How do we wait for warmer days and fountains without force
bumping against sockets that sing where waterless bones move toward their rivers in incense
rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins
Hey, Lawdy, Mama! Do you hear what I said?
The water infects… and every day, the air darkens… The air, the only black thing of concern —
How many times can a woman say why
With her hands in the moonlight?
Too much love not enough to eat gravel and blood fires
this kind of fire that strikes black bodies into fever from the hot thread of a blues song.
Another man done gone
Black hands still turn blood red working the strawberry fields.
Still may the painter’s and the poet’s fire leave the rolling universe behind
measure the skies and range the realms above
into delight, into the sharp edge of seasons, into the sweet puff of bread baking,
the warm vale of sheet and sweat after love
into dying backyard light. Both hands steal into the swollen summer air,
a blind reach into a blaze of acid, the sky’s mirrored constellation to freedom.
Wake to find everything black what was white,
all the vice versa — eclipses bright, dark stars shooting across pale sky,
glowing like ash in fire, shower every skin.
Until then, a mother rocks a boy in her arms and whispers my baby is getting so big.
the ground cracks.
A fresh grave begins to rise from the earth.
“Cento in Memory of George Floyd” is comprised entirely of lines borrowed from the following poets (in order of appearance): Audre Lorde, Tracy K. Smith, Danez Smith, Makalani Bandele, Gwendolyn Brooks, A.H. Jerriod Avant, Nicole Sealey, Sonia Sanchez, Langston Hughes, Jericho Brown, Robin Coste Lewis, Mahogany Browne, Yusef Komunyakaa, Phillis Wheatley, Lucille Clifton, Nikky Finney, Jacqueline Woodson, Kevin Young, and Hanif Abdurraqib
Poets Resist is published by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
