James Lewis’s Hands

My Grand (James Lewis) loved her (Ellen)

very much even though he had many lady

friends.

-Mother’s Journal

James loved the ladies.
The women came with pies, oozed
words, as sticky as their pies.
They brought fresh churned butter,
thick and fluffy as summer clouds.
They buzzed and rubbed their legs
together, queen bees, drunk with want,
drawn to honey of his Cherokee tongue
and deep-set, promising, midnight eyes.
Even after James went to Staunton, Virginia,
miles away, brought Ellen to his marriage
bed, women came, as surely as seasons.
They followed James to his ripe fields,
shadows trailing a summer sun.
There he hummed, but never sang.

His long lean shadow cast him larger
as he stroked tobacco leaves with strong
brown hands; his eyes stroked them.
They watched his hands weave baskets,
pull cane for chair bottoms, tried to will
his hands on them even for a moment.
Evenings his fingers wandered the curve
of Ellen’s neck and throat.
They entangled themselves in her hair,
made love to her lips and eyes, followed
familiar paths of her varied textures.
His warm lips and body in full and varied
tones sang his love songs for her.
Night ears heard him say, Beloved El.
She whispered her name for him, Song Bird.

The Great Migration

Black families left the south with
burning in their bodies. It was not
a fever but fire paper-fed.
Crops left in fields, sun-scorched
Georgia rice, dried Louisiana
sugar cane, and parched earth below
the Mason-Dixon Line became history.
No leader, but destination led.
Fueled by words of The Chicago Defender:
lynching, low wages, southern funerals,
despair erupted into something tangible.
The newspaper smuggled by Pullman
Porters was a fan, was fuel
passed north to south, hand to hand
in barbershops and Black churches.
North to Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia,
tongues of flames redefined landscapes.
The Industrial Revolution lusted for workers
even the Mississippi spilling over
with families’ tears could not stop the push
pull of momentum.
Ahead northern unburned ground,
candescent light, smoke hiss, smolder.
Combustion.

If My Sapling Survives Winter…

Georgia, 1916

The white-woman’s words hang, caught up
in southern humidity.
You’re a good girl, not too much starch
in the collars and cuffs, don’t talk back.
Fannie is silent, with lowered head, her face
is ironed smooth with learned ancestral lessons.
She lifts laundry from her cart to the backyard table.
The woman’s voice continues, silky smooth,
Listen Fannie; better get your Charlie out of town;
they’ll be riding soon.
Fannie bows her covered hair, a fragile yellow rose.
Yes, Ma’am. Thank you, Ma’am. Her voice isn’t hers
but something ancient, fractured.
She smiles, closes the garden gate between them.
Her legs are commanded to expected slowness down
the hill; she paces herself like the first few earth-clumps
of an avalanche. At the turn, out of sight, Georgia clay
wet from a summer-morning storm is no match
for Fannie’s
determination. Her feet barely touch the ground.
Her cart bangs her heels. Soon in safety of thick
pinewoods,
she screams up into menacing clouds. I hate you,
Creator.
I hate you, God. I hate you as Yaweh. I hate all
your names.
I hate you, Beliah, you African, for bringing your
Eastern God
to my husband’s Gullah people. You preached hope,
preached power of morning and afternoon prayers to
the east
but nothing has changed in stealing of children,
not words
or chains. Trees are my church. They are my
messengers.
When summer-green leaves whisper and brown
autumn leaves
tap messages, sooshwan, sooshwan, I believe. I believe
in the bend of their heads and sway of their bodies.
I listen
as they listen to my screams. Shhhh. Shhhh. I know
if my sapling fig tree survives the winter my son will
be safe
on his journey up north.

Translations

Hidden by the lush pregnant
bulge of Cape Verde
is Île de Gorée
where slave houses
called castles, cling like sores
on the body of Mother Africa.
Gorée, once called “Goede Reede,”
translated Safe Haven,
is child of barter and trade.
Purchased with Dutch iron
bars, it is forged with shame.
Slave houses called castles
were many on Île de Gorée.
In Elmina Castle, concealed
by a turn in a wall, I see
stained, rust-colored neck irons
and in bowels of Cape Coast Castle
sea breezes beg entry
at tiny barred windows.
From holy crumbling walls
my fingers scratch green mold
fixed like scabs.
In the harbor a gull screams
a woman’s scream.
The sound grates a language
translated by marks
on the chain-scarred floors.

From Lions Don't Eat Us. Copyright 2006 by Constance Quarterman Bridges. All rights reserved.