it was my first poetry reading
i, a reluctant 7 year old attendee
standing in my jockeys as my sister,
her mouth twisting violently
around Dunbar’s dialectic verse,
screeched "lias, lias, bless de lawd"
at eight, my sister lacked subtlety
screaming lines without attention to timbre or tone, commas & hyphens caused her no pause
she was, as instructed, projecting,
loud enough for her voice to bounce
off the rear of draper elementary’s auditorium
& to wake the deceased & resting Dunbar
a shrill fisherwoman’s delivery for a future audience
shut up, I muttered, through sleepy eyes
as my sister switched to Langston’s poem,
"life for me ain’t been no crystal stair"
her head rocking with emphasis & joy at my annoyance i heard these two poems ricochet off the walls of our home no less than five thousand times in a truncated february
my friends came to my home often,
looking for this kid named lias, who caused my sister to scream with madness every waking hour
& searching in vain for the crystals in our stairs by the time my sister had her official reading
our entire family was reciting both poems
like brainwashed idiots
thirty years later, it is me
annoying my family with verse and stanza
casting my life by the poems coursing my veins while my sister’s life has become the jagged minstrel that identify Dunbar’s lyrics
her song marked by the erratic meter
of an addict’s rhyme as she fills her lungs
with the shattered remains of a descending crystal stair
now i recite poems that beg her to live, that implore her to be as tenacious in her search for rhythm & meaning as the little girl who lit up our home with sweet black words who Langston warned and Dunbar amused
in the morning,
i pray for the blessing of any lord for some lyrical benediction to heal her cacophonous wounds & make whole again the little girl, who clings to sonnets & sobriety.