Monique Ferrell

raha

you get used to how things are   soon learn poverty 

makes prisoners of us all  

 

that the infinity of your world   is a window   

you are told repeatedly to   come away from  

 

for it isn’t safe  

 

learn even more quickly   a bullet   doesn’t have a name   how it                                     

almost seems to enjoy   settling hard upon the other side of its point                                                                           

when you are young   impressionable   and too curious     

 

you simply must  know   what is on the other side of your                                                  

small   protected   part of the universe  

 

the place that isn’t much safer

 

but you learn   work hard at pretend   become fluent in nothearing                            

as the adults   of your world   constantly come for each other      

 

even when   they do not mean to   

or want to

 

with time   you comprehend they have no understanding   of why

memory   conjures up such a battle-ready    kind of anguish

 

for them   there is no answer for empty wallets   no balm for bruised childhoods         

the stillwiththem   of what it means to walk   nay shuffle through the school day   

newspapers plugging holes   in their shoes   after having survived another night        

of a hungry belly   muffled-out   by the dull music from a neighbor’s apartment                                                                                                                            

only to make it through to the next day   the next shuffling of feet   fearing               

the return home   the running past that neighbor’s apartment 

 

the man who is surely unsafe                            

 

they moved   it seemed   if my childhood ears heard correctly          

from one catastrophe to the next   the muffling   the shuffling   the running

 

and   when this cycle had been perfected   they learned still more 

about the upending of eviction   the indoors becoming out-of-doors                     

 

my curiosity therefore   about the other side of windows   read hollow

to the adults who reared me   in the small home   holding too many black bodies                                                                                                              

to them   my hopeful gazing was a borrowing of trouble      

brought them nothing   but more worry    a cause for additional concern  

 

and a quick   sudden   kind of shame

 

why couldn’t I see the threadbareness of life   why refuse to acknowledge

its fraying edge   or come to understand   that dodging adult bodies  

hurling themselves at each other   was an immediate declaration of war                      

 

and didn’t I know   that the battlefield   was as indoors as my out-of-doors 

 

and of course   I did

 

would see my first dead body by age nine   watching from my window   as he lay for hours    

on the playground asphalt   surrounded by police tape   its yellow whipped by the cooling air

 

knew what it meant to ride darkened elevators   straddling human excrement   understood    

that girls and women where occasionally taken  from equally darkened stairwells 

when the elevators were intentionally disabled   from their designated work 

 

but I could not help myself   for there was the window   a precious pane of glass

 

a doorway   a universe

 

where an elderly man raised and rested his pigeons   on a rooftop 

 

there   he fed them   stroked them   and it seemed   knew them by name   

 

each day   he flew them in amazing patterns   and they were free                                                                    

no matter the weather   or dismal circumstance

 

and each time   at the end of their day   at the end of their work  

 

their grand ghetto performance concluded                       

 

they returned to him   with the safety                   

of never having to know   the muffling shuffling running 

their indoors becoming out-of-doors

 

and to my childhood eyes   they shared with him the news of the day     

and so I learned   in this way  to expect freedom   the eventualness of it

 

craving beyond the sing-songing of bullets  the muffling shuffling running

the perpetualness    of generational indoors becoming out-of-doors

 

to ignore   if for a short time   the fraying edge                                                                     

learned how to look   beyond the flailing bodies                                      

the concerned eyes at my hopefulness 

understood    that I would one day   move beyond   this

 

the dark side of my immediate moon   returning to it one day

 

with a grateful news    about what lies beyond

Monique Ferrell is a poet and fiction writer. She is the author of three books of poetry: attraversiamo (2016), Unsteady (2011), and Black Body Parts (2002). Her writing has appeared in American Poetry Review, North American Review, Antioch Review, Cimarron Review, and New York Quarterly, among other creative writing journals, as well as the anthologies Token Entry, Out of the Rough, The Place Where We Dwell, and Rabbit Ears: TV Poems.  Full Profile

Monique Ferrell is an award-winning writer. An author of both poetry and fiction, her work was featured on The Slowdown with American Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith and has appeared in noted creative writing magazines, journals, and anthologies: Bellevue Literary Review, Inflectionist Review, Reed Magazine, American Poetry Review, Antioch Review, North American Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Quarterly West, Valley Voices, New York Quarterly Review, Token Entry, Out of The Rough, Rabbit Ears, and Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song, among others.

Ferrell has received poetry honors from Jacar Press (the Julie Suk Award), the Black Caucus of The American Library Association (BCALA), and Winning Writers (Tom Howard Award)... Full Profile