Aubade
Spring 2020
At first light they start.
Removed by two hours
from New York, I am useless.
A mute witness to the latest
scourge. From my laptop,
digital images and sounds
of the breathless, the dying.
The voices of millions
gathered in revolt. The news
collects inside like the heat
of day, and at night I escape
to the porch where it’s cool
and slide into sleep.
Morning brings birdsong.
From my perch amid the trees
only the screen between me
and the world: a catbird
with its meandering melody
then a robin. A distant veery
spirals its song. A wood thrush
downhill its fluting cousin.
Whistle of a cardinal nearby.
So many. A chorus. A throng.
I don’t know all their names.
Oriole. Tanager. Wren.
Their names. There are so many.
Breonna. The sound of eight shots.
Ahmaud. George who cried
Mama. Tamir Freddie Sandra
on and on. They are loud
in my head. They echo through
time and the forest. They drown
out the creek. It is not yet 5am.
I am saying their names
©2020
Rain Leaping Up When a Cab Goes Past, Seven Kitchens Press, 2013 (chapbook)
Poems
Cider Press Review: “As New York Snow”
The Good Men Project: “Unspoken at JFK” (reprint)
Lambda Literary: “Dance Bar,” “Leavings”
Mayday Magazine: “Across the Galaxy” (as “Company”)
Nonfiction
Mayday Magazine: “Messages from Howard”
Book Reviews
on Lambda Literary
The Tradition, Jericho Brown
Don’t Call Us Dead, Danez Smith
Trouble the Water, Derrick Austin
Collective Brightness: LGBTIQ Poets on Faith, Religion & Spirituality, Kevin Simmonds, ed.
