James Cagney

Seven Daughters

every seventh daughter in our clan
gets the call of spirit through her feet
& her nails keep growing despite all
efforts to stop them

at spring solstice her toenails
would begin swirling
and twisting into brittle roots
sharp as antelope antlers
slicing through bedding, floor, walls
as if reaching for food, for light.
The inaugural event was traced back to
Mother Allula who walked the banks
of the Ogooue, dragging her feet along the
stone road hoping to break them apart
but failing. She waded into the river
kicking fish to shore. She sat on a stone,
pulled her feet towards her mouth,
and chewed her nails loose, spitting
the gray chips to the wind. But by sundown,
she'd rooted in place, too deep for the tribes
strongest wrestlers to unfix her, and drowned
in the blue monsoon her toenails
provided the last ingredient for.

since then, the elders began instructing us
thru dreams to sacrifice cattle
and write poems in blood,
dry their skins into bulbed skirts,
bury ourselves waist deep in coppery
mud, paint our faces in flour and clay
as we petition the gods to free us
until these branched tendrils dissolve into ash
and we learn spirit is our true body
our flesh only seed

Negro-geist!

I. Daddy

old crow, jack daniels understood
my father mouthfuls at a time.
Jim Bean and Old Forester
were uncles in hard glass suits
they'd roll up in the knuckle
crack & sign of hennessy
taking its first breath, then hound
dog laughter & dominoes
falling in hail on the grave
yard of the dining room table.
Relatives who existed
only through stories and memory
would ease in like zombies on ropes of
blue marlboro & newport & camel smoke
then demand a séance in spades, coon can
& texas hold em

no wonder they call it spirits!

Spirits baited my father with
couvoisier, snatching him out of his body
like a river catfish and he'd vanish! like that
spirits made him burn rubber scream
in the driveway, stand on my bed a sloppy
marionette & speak in tongue
or just toss pans and skillets at midnight

I wouldn't see his ass again
till the next afternoon looking
like something had chewed
all the sugar out of him
and spit the gray pulp on the couch

II. Johnny

My cousin Johnny volunteered
for possession every week.
Spirits lit that nigga up like vesuvius,
he was certified!
electroshock exorcisms did nothing
empty bottles & cans
were his weekend storm warning
old english, colt 45, crazy horse,
cisco-they'd demand sacrifices
in blood so bottles of
haldol & thorazine
would dice roll under the couch
Friday nights, then doors
slam to splinters, tables
get flipped, walls
kicked until strait
jackets lay waiting on
the lawn. Momma
would site visions of gang
boys with tire iron erections
& johnny's convertible skull
with its metal vent as if
it explained anything.
it didn't.

tween dusk Friday and dawn Saturday
he'd still be ready to
blow this muthafucka up.
You want some of this?
Do. You. Want. Some. Of. This?!
oh no oh yes oh no oh yes
I'll be damn I'll be
damn I'll be damn!

Little Brother

We bonded his second week at the job,
him being one of the company's few black
male employees, and the youngest.
“I don't want to be here,”
he frowned. "It's my birthday."
It was less a month before my own.
"Just turned dub one,” He said.
I treated him to a cheeseburger.
Thereafter, we behaved like relatives;
foolish, silly boys. He had a complex
about his modest size--he admired my bulk
and would often challenge me in the hallway.

We were caught once,
punching and shoving one another
by a young file clerk in braids.
Stepping off the elevator, seeing us struggle
she announced, momma like, 'yawl stupid.'
and pushed on to the fax room.
I should have known better-
being 15 years older.

But I never had a brother.
And somehow I admired him.
He was not shy and withdrawn like me.
He was loud. Friendly. Charmingly obnoxious.

We spent lunches looking at females,
him criticizing me for missing all the good ass,
then pushing me to holla
after getting clear I wasn't gay.
He'd post up against a building
as if being photographed for Vibe,
send me after butter colored sisters
in short pants or cute white girls
with ass, then afterwards: "What
you say to make her laugh?"
Or, "I should have gone after
that one." We speed-window-shopped
Gaps, Republics, Navy's, Lockers,
saw colored shirts stacked like candy
and huge rock walls of shoes. Monday
morning he asked about my weekend
date with the Mexican girl and,
over a bacon and egg burrito swirling
in his mouth like shirts in a laundry,
barked: "Did you fuck?! Did you fuck?!'
Not wanting to hear anything else but
Hell Yeah.

He told me he stopped smoking weed
because it made him paranoid--
yet he was still afflicted. The day
he had laryngititis he surfed the net
for images of enlarged, infected tonsils
and was devestated to read the connection
between AIDS and cancer via the thyroid.
He opened his mouth, demanding
I diagnose him, & check the soft
cavern of his throat for tumors.

One day, he pulled me aside.
I want to talk to you in private.
We walked to the outdoor patio
behind our building. He sat awaiting
the courage to call for his HIV test results.
Turning his cell phone over in his hands
like a stone he'd like to throw,
he told me he was scared,
and asked wouldn't I be too.
Wanna to find the perfect one, he said.
But she wasn't it.
He told me about her,
about their session.
Showed me scratches
on back of his hand from
her grip, told me about him riding her,
telling her to whisper
cause his mother was in
the next room, about him holding
her arms from behind like handles
of a wheel barrow,
him accidentally calling her That Word
while on his hind legs
and the look she gave him. Then,
the condom snapped like an overworked sail.
Fruit juice went everywhere, he said.
A great silence enveloped us
as the nurse put him on hold.
He stared at his phone and frowned.
What to tell him? What to say?
This is as close as I have ever been
to having a real moment
Father and son, brother to brother. But, God-
I have seen how his world
is so much larger than mine
and I am ashamed to be so ill-prepared
to tell him anything except
you're going to be fine,
little brother, if you just wait.

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Cover Design: Joseph McNair