Second Line

1

What was it like? Who could say? He could not.
When she woke he would ask her what it was,
not what it was like, or fiddle with words
to make a music only he could hear . . .

He sat in the day room, on the day bed,
getting the day together to live through.
He lay down now that he heard a stirring
from her room, body rising from the bed.

The sound was like ivy or dahlias
or bougainvillea, or the acacia
tree promised Paula and never given . . .
but most like peonies Maria loves . . .

The sound of her waking stayed with colors
that were green and red and all the colors
between the sun and water , all the hues
graced with a fluency of roots changing

and in his not-so-old memory here
where music was coming in from the street,
brisk, up-tempo, swinging, you couldn’t see
the second line if you didn’t look out

a window or door, he had no notion
what she was doing, was she even there?

2

It’s better than the dirge, he heard himself
wanting to say and get it all over
with her, follow the Mississippi up
to Cairo, follow the tributaries

to her city. This city was so old
you could die here. You could just up and die
and she would never know, and she did care . . .
how could she help but care in Chicago?

(6 February 2011)

copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander

Ashe

for Maria Teresa

1

Never stop moving, world. You are my own
celebration. I never stop telling
you my love of, for, and because of your
existence. A galaxy is not much
beside a human being in his chains,
or hers. She brings to life in her body
the spawn that moves all the eggs it conjures
into splitting apart, seeking its own
double through the avenues of this world
and finding him or her, the universe
without end, no matter what force against
her body stalls her, she stirs, she returns
to the unending motion in all things
she loves ridding the universe of hate.

2

Angleterre, or was it Angloterra–
French or Portuguese, corruption of birth
she threw off like clothes, the sun at its height,
the power in her rising and rising
until there was no stopping it flowing
through the endless heat of her own lava.

O there never was a way not to tell
her story. She liked to die in her sleep
and wake to find hands and legs all her own
to let her live as long as the city
was here, someone like this young man to walk
with her slowly down the long street and back.

So she was named that, she would name herself
like any child who was her own . . . Adore.

3

She slept. Juan looked in on her. She was still
all the time he stood with the door open.

(5 February 2011)

copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander

The Horses

When the horses came she stayed in her room.
They entered from the back, one a time
with furious manes, unshod hooves and eyes
illuminating the room with shades drawn
to keep them mounting her one at a time
over all the days they would be here now.
She said what the loas told her to say.
You erred calling Erzulie Eulalie
Erzulie-ge-rouge suffers such mad rage
Go with us home where we live out the days
Let us in to be with you all the nights
We go with her to the water to drink
We run with her wherever she is called
She sends us to you to answer the door

Music came in the house in spite of them.
They opened the door, closed it behind them.
The house was too old to keep music out.
It only grew louder as it passed by.
They let it be, it was only a dirge.
The music was for the someone who died.
They knew how to die and live forever.
They could be earth, they could be water.
They were everywhere they wanted to be.
They would come if they could hear you calling.
They would come if you knew the words to say.
There were words with music but not the same.
Their music was sung by the one they rode.
The one they rode was the one who rode them.

When her face is no longer red, body
washed of love slaked for her sake, go on back

(4 February 2011)

copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander
　

Young Girl's Ghost

Ira was twenty years older. She was
fifteen when it happened. You love young
you never forget. She had no reason
to forget. She never met any man
would make her do that. And she looked around,
she said: I was old for my age. Mama
said I was the spitting image of her,
the way I flounced, sashayed, and tempted men
once the month came around to nudge the moon
and make my blood flow. No man ever knew
what Ira knew, to make my body purr
and moan, nothing could be the same again . . .
Why did he have to up and die on me?
O sometimes I didn’t want to go on
once I knew there was nothing up ahead . . .

Juan listened. He wrote what he heard her say.
He knew they would never be the same words.
She smiled when he told her words on paper
bleached out in the sun. What she said would go
away then. He would have to remember
not only what she said but how she said
and what the sound was inside her voices,
the only octaves that the left hand played
and not very far up the right hand’s scale.
She got a kick out of her husband’s kin.
If she were younger she would make a move
and catch him up the way Ira found her
not only that first night but all the nights
thereafter. Even in her eighties now
she knew how to dream like her young girl’s ghost.

(3 February 2011)

copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander

Whereupon

Whereupon Ira and Adore took up
being lovers living together long
and wide and deep as long as Ira lived
and while she lived his memory filled her
as he had. She told Juan what she knew well,
nothing but everything, the nights still dark,
the days bright without rain but even then
they were laced together in heart and skin.
This city is so beautiful, she said,
the rain falls on the just and the unjust
alike, and the ugly is what it is
in men’s souls rusting from their transgressions.
Those men who took your red-haired wife, she said
to Juan, got theirs one way or the other
from Eulalie, I bet she set them right.

Ira lived in Adore’s house. Her three rooms,
bedroom, day room, kitchen. One door in front,
one in back. You know the kind: Shotgun shack,
reader mine, who first said it so I know
to stay out of the line of fire. She was
his own. He was her own. They were their own.
He sat in the bedroom to play his horn.
Sometimes walked around the bed listening,
lip fit to the piece like a turtle’s house.
Other times he made notes on the paper
with lines, picked up from the club and brought home
to set down what he had all inside him
and didn’t know until now he knew. Now
he talked the others into playing it
with him. Adore stood in back of the room.

(2 February 2011)

copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander

　

And So

he believed the night was only darkness
and music and now it was also love
in her bed with her body around his
and his upon hers and the thirst, hunger
ravenous as the sounds inside his head
married with silence, slaking their bodies,
devouring all that he and she ever were
to be and forgetting all that had been
and what they would never be in old age
and the candles flickered against the wall
and her kisses tattooed his lips, his hers,
bodies glistening if you could see them
and nobody but they would ever see
the light reflected in their bodies’ sweat,
his cock high up in her delicious cunt,
his hips a merry-go-round, her hips too,
and after he poured his love into her
she straddled him and moved like the loas
were with her, but how could they be with her
now she was beginning to love this man
the more he murmured the words in her ear
and they seemed to her to be listening
to her thoughts unveiling themselves slowly
as she had undressed in the candle light
revealing her perfect body naked
and his lust mingling with what you call love
that is not love but only beginning
to be what must go on so very long
it could be dead soon but it is living
and what is known as love lives very long

(1 February 2011)

copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander

　

Love

He came from where water spilling over
was a sign the country was in good health.
He learned to swim jumping from a high place
into a pool his brothers said was deep
enough to let him find the bottom
but not so deep a body would not find
the surface again. River spilled over
a falls where you could walk and sit all day.
The Blue Ridge. Mountains you could see as far
as your eyes took you, standing up as high
as you could find the top of the highest
mountain close enough to home to get there
and back. And the rest of it, why he came
to New Orleans she would hear later.
For now, she taught him to love her, her way.
He didn’t let no chicken foot stop him.
She let him gather her up in his arms
and carry her through the open doorway
touching nothing that would bring them bad luck,
how she made sure the loas were quiet.
She had her ways. He didn’t need to ask
to know what she was, why she was that way,
why any of it had a thing to do
with him. It was no stranger to mountains,
just came from another place, that was all,
and what didn’t have to start from somewhere?
She talked about it like it was human.
She still did. Juan heard the same thing Ira
came to believe was all they ever had
in common, what Adore did not call love.

(31 January 2011)

copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander