For Jimmie Lee Jackson

18-26 February 1965, Marion and Selma, Alabama

 

A cloud of starlings drifts from the river,

 

at first, a smudge on the sky

or the hospital window,

 

then more definite,

 

contracting then scattering

like pain.

 

Nuns ghost, white-robed

 

as night-riders in the farm-edge pines

haunting the forest along the river,

 

like lilies on Cahaba’s shoals.

 

_______________________________________________

 

Whenever he wakes someone else is there

just out of view

 

prayer drowned in the rasp of breath

 

a song like breaking glass.

 

Wings clench in the fluorescent tubes,

flutter of shadows

 

the state patrol colonel

darkening the bed

 

handcuffs on the rail,

a warrant for a tongue.

 

Then wings,

blown smoke

 

gathering somewhere

just out of view.

 

_______________________________________________

 

At the church just after dark

 

hymns, then the night march

across the square

 

to sing through the jailhouse window

and February to their brother

 

who can hear them in their pews,

hear them descend

 

to the waiting mayor and police chief,

the state troopers who bullhorn them back.

 

When the reverend kneels to pray,

one patrolman swings his club,

 

all the lights go down.

 

_______________________________________________

 

Photograph strobes

carve their bodies from the dark,

 

break and pucker of serge and wool

on arms boxed

 

to catch the blows,

 

night-sticks straight

from the flex of uniform sleeves

 

coats taut between the blades,

white helmets’ gleam

 

and above, a heaven of breath

and steam and smoke from which

 

dark feathers

then spreads

 

coughing dense night air

at the cusp of the lens

 

carving through the barrel

 

to spread the shutters blind

 

_______________________________________________

 

No one sees the congregation scatter

 

or the troopers chase

 

to the river or church

or blockhouse café

 

No one sees the bottles flying

As they climb the stairs

 

or the bricks in the troopers’ affidavits

 

No one sees the clubs

 

or the thousand starlings

smoking at the lights

 

No one sees the old woman

swinging Cokes on the troopers’ heads

 

or falling from their sticks

 

or the old man lunging in their affidavits

or falling

 

or the young one, the grandson

step in to catch the blow

 

or take the gun

 

_______________________________________________

 

They see the flash and kickback

 

Jimmie Lee folding in the glass

 

 

 

of the cigarette machine

 

tube light halo, electric hum

 

 

 

Smoke feathers

 

singing glass

 

 

 

the grandfather’s face arriving, arriving

 

in the intermittent light.

 

_______________________________________________

 

No one sees them drag him down the stairs

and into the street

 

but that is where they found him

 

No one sees them beat so hard

clubs splinter

 

skin and spit and blood

through the haze of breath, bodies’ stream

 

spit half-syllables

that echo from the church face,

 

the courthouse, tangled strange

 

and having

found each other

 

whole

 

as if the refugees of bone and skin

and breath

 

gathered in the eaves

and hollows of the dark

 

coalesce

so their blows return

 

ghost wings at their ears

 

_______________________________________________

 

Blood beading arc-lights’ flicker, feathertips of faint

in the road’s warm pitch, wings’ sheen and the splay

 

of fingers, starling descending from the dark,

assembling in his mother’s warmth, having learned

 

her hush-now timbre but saying things he can’t make sense.

 

He keeps saying their recurring sentences, what he hears

in the whisper songs at the lips of his ears.

 

The doctors open him again, one last

bullet, infection nesting there.

 

The pavement warm beneath.

Pulse of footfall. Wings.

 

_______________________________________________

 

Dark beats in the overhead lights

till the room is night and sheen

 

that folds from stars

then sky

 

into Selma’s oaks

and the girders of the bridge

 

and the churches’ steeples,

and into all the pines

 

from there to Marion,

 

gathering in the stands

around the farm

 

where his grandfather

follows the preachers

 

back through the woods.

 

_______________________________________________

 

February silvers all their bruises.

Breath curls into the pines,

 

into the murmuring dim

 

and when they slow

everything is quiet

 

and he can see the towns,

the map forming on their lips.

 

And when they speak

he sees

 

their mouths are full of birds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Sergey Yeliseev