Sweet Onion Soup

by Tim Seibles

When a man is killed
the wind doesn’t cool his face
and the sky is like an urn, like
a painted bowl turned over on him.
He’s so weak lying there—his hand
is like a starfish too far from the sea.
He would like to lift it up and
place it over his face to fend off
the glare of things still living.
And even if his stomach is empty
he only wants a little to eat—maybe
half-a-slice of bread and one spoonful
of sweet onion soup. Not like
when he was alive, which already seems
three Aprils ago, when he would eat
everything he could fit
into his eyes. “One time,”
his father told him, “when your cousin
turned his head to sneeze
you stole the porkchop off his plate.”
But when a man is killed he
doesn’t remember being a boy very much—
maybe a few things, like trying
to keep a bullfrog in a shoebox
or having to sit still in church
while his father’s raised right eyebrow
flew above him like a hawk.
But he’s in such a helpless mood.
His mouth is dry and he can’t quite
move his tongue across his lips
which is something he used to do
all the time.

“Sweet Onion Soup” from Hurdy-Gurdy
by Tim Seibles, © 1992
Cleveland State University Poetry Center

Most Poetry will post a poem by a poet of color, selected by our members, each day through the month of July.

Passive Voice

by Laura Da’

I use a trick to teach students
how to avoid passive voice.

Circle the verbs.
imagine inserting “by zombies”
after each one.

Have the words been claimed
by the flesh-hungry undead?
If so, passive voice.

I wonder if these
sixth graders will recollect,
on summer vacation,
as they stretch their legs
on the way home
from Yellowstone or Yosemite
and the byway’s historical marker
beckons them to the
site of an Indian village—

Where trouble was brewing.
Where, after further hostilities, the army was directed to enter.
Where the village was razed after the skirmish occurred.
Where most were women and children.

Riveted bramble of passive verbs
etched in wood—
stripped hands
breaking up from the dry ground
to pinch the meat
of their young tongues.

“Passive Voice” from TRIBUTARIES by Laura Da’ copyright 2015 by Laura Da’.

Most Poetry will post a poem by a poet of color, selected by our members, each day through the month of July.

Anasazi

by Tacey M. Atsitty

How can we die when we’re already
prone to leaving the table mid-meal
like Ancient Ones gone to breathe
elsewhere. Salt sits still, but pepper’s gone
rolled off in a rush. We’ve practiced dying
for a long time: when we skip dance or town,
when we chew. We’ve rounded out
like dining room walls in a canyon, eaten
through by wind—Sorry we rushed off;
the food wasn’t ours. Sorry the grease sits
white on our plates, and the jam that didn’t set—
use it as syrup to cover every theory of us.

From RAIN SCALD. Copyright © 2018 by University of New Mexico Press.

Most Poetry will post a poem by a poet of color, selected by our members, each day through the month of July.

On Teaching My Son How to Mourn

by Khaty Xiong

I tell him to touch his toes. He reaches for them in a squat.
He stabs them with his little fingers. One toe. Two toes.
Then we say our letters, spell out all the sounds we will deliver
              because the death of a child is no small death.
I extend to him an open palm where he makes a fist
and slams it into my hand, a form, he wearily shouts,
is “a butterfly coming home!” We play “give me a five”
and continue swatting at the butterflies
              until the sun goes down.
I don’t recall ever playing with my mother like this.
Late one morning, my son caught me pinching
the sides of my head, my face wet from so much crying.
He punched my arm, which knocked one hand off
of my face. Ashamed that he saw me, I laughed very loudly
which brought him concern and happiness. He never
mentioned it again and I never forgave myself.
              My good son, running through the garden
in giggles. He is waiting for me to catch him. Once
I pretended to have fallen in a pit. I did not tell him
it was a grave. Very quickly he sprinted over and stood
beside my body. “Your hand!” he demanded.
Like a little father. I gave him my hand.
“Now, the other hand!” I give him the other.

Source: Poetry (June 2019)

Most Poetry will post a poem by a poet of color, selected by our members, each day through the month of July.

The End of Exile

by Solmaz Sharif

As the dead, so I come
to the city I am of.
Am without.

To watch play out around me
as theater —

audience as the dead are audience

to the life that is not mine.
Is as not
as never.

Turning down Shiraz’s streets
it turns out to be such

a faraway thing.

A without which
I have learned to be.

From bed, I hear a man in the alley
selling something, no longer by mule and holler
but by bullhorn and jalopy.

How to say what he is selling —

it is no thing
this language thought worth naming.
No thing I have used before.

It is his
life I don’t see daily.
Not theater. Not play.

Though I remain only audience.

It is a thing he must sell daily
and every day he peddles

this thing: a without which

I cannot name.

Without which is my life.

Source: Poetry (April 2018)

Most Poetry will post a poem by a poet of color, selected by our members, each day through the month of July.