Stellar places

African American Review, Winter, 2003 by Jeffery Renard Allen

stellar places
--for robert hayden

   junkweed blossom
   jughead rhyme
   bad weather branches
   wide-band horizon sagging like a laundry line

   a settling soak
   traveling music to my ears

   for water brought us here
   water carry us back

   muscle this current or any other

   bend a mile and a quarter
   fire sorts us out

   barnyard fowls snatch a moment
   from yellow-absorbing day to
   scratch trajectories in callous dirt
   treacherous beaks pecking
   down starched rows idling wings can't conquer
   mocking feathers sparkling like paradise
   three-toed dance against a gut-bucket promise

   a puzzling compensation

   peacock gloom
   these envious trees hinged to the seasons

   so rise and hold nothing
   tug aside your royal curtain and hunt for shelter
   god-glint and lazy color
   night ringing its spears
   three views of a city beyond the rattling shutters

   november 7, 2000

Jeffery Renard Allen is Associate Professor of English at Queens College of the City University of New York, where he teaches African American literature and creative writing, His books of poetry include Harbors and Spirits and Stellar Places, both published by Asphodel Press, and his novel Rails Under My Back received the Chicago Tribune's Heartland Prize for fiction.