Underneath the Sheets of White Noise

from Youth Detention///(nail my feet down to the southside of town) (2017)

The suburban skies Crackled with the signal. The national TV crews had descended On the press conferences and vigils, The food-court pundits at the mall. She looked out Through her frozen blue eyes, From all the grocery-store checkout-line front-pages At the tiny, grainy, black and brown faces In yellowing flyers pinned to the wall.

Her objections are Inspired, literate, brilliant, In her cutting cadence, in her Northside drawl, When Ms. England cuts her off, Saying, “Girl, you’re just too loud!” She has bowed her Braided, beaded head back toward her notes, but I can sense her shoulders slightly shake. I can hear the tears tapping on the page. I can see the ink begin to cloud.

The infield is thick with Cries of “burnt biscuit” and “white chocolate.” Then “bitch,” “bank account,” “peckerwood.” I grow red in the stinging swarm of words When somebody yells and points at the street. There, like some old Western movie, A few Mexican boys Kick a ball into the park’s dusty fringe. The posse turns from me to glare at the in- Truders. I drink deep of the hateful relief.

Underneath the sheets of white noise This city sings her multitudes, Underneath the sheets of white noise The verses long, the beats raw and loose. Underneath the sheets of white noise She sings awake her daughters and sons, Underneath the sheets of white noise And, at my very best, I’m only one.

You envision the Raj’s stone halls, the dark, defiled Ganges. She slaps the lectern. Snow hurries past the window. She points to the silent roar of burning widows, Blackened figures on a bleached field. Your thoughts turn south, The crowd outside the hunched foodmart, And that sagging copy of an old plantation, Windows clad in pressboard, columns kudzu-laced. Can the cornerboys speak? Can the collegeboy hear?