Crooked Letters

Reverend, was poor old Lazarus raised up after all

to save the rich man’s folks?

Under the bench, she rubs her crusted eyes, where she lies,

vested in some dead man’s clothes.

As our shined shoes clatter past, the bells boom off glassy cliffs,

drifting slowly down

Onto the purring suburban engines of dark-suited men

who shall inherit downtown.

The boys demand to know if he’s white or black, and squint

into his sun-browned face, framed with black curls of hair.

He sighs, and, with his finger, draws sprawling maps

of the Middle East into the hot, damp, heavy air.

""So, are you white or black?"" His mouth falls open.

His eyes trace the patchy skyline, frayed by the evening sun.

A green-neon crucifix crowns the steeple where, Sundays,

His folks recite prayers in the Lord's dead tongue.

Ten winding years, and I can't decide

Which ones to discard and which ones to abide.

All the crooked letters.

Slow to admit what I can’t fix, I stare at the wall,

smudged and stark, sprayed with white light, a flickering page.

The coffee’s burnt, the styrofoam sour,

the creamer in clumps, the verses crumbling away.

Beneath the daytime TV babble run the rattle and the whine

of the impact wrench.

Eyes fixed in space, the body man drags his hand over the seam.

It’s not a straightening out, but a shaping, over, and over, and over, again.

Three winding years, and I can’t decide

Which ones to discard and which ones should abide.

All the crooked letters.