winding itself down a dark alleyway
when dusk was most dusk and threatening
day with never returning.
A poem becoming the most subtle mother,
the sweetest and meanest keeper of bones,
and breaker of them.
A poem to be a hospital, in all it means
to recuperate the weary, to medicate a malady
out of a lime body, out of blue veins.
When this poem finally utters its name,
flames also utter theirs, a copper pot
boils over with froth, it steams,
a sputter shivers and draws a blank,
a blanket won’t do for cover.
When this poems says yes, a thousand
yeses dress themselves for a fête
and dance with no nos no matter
how well they play the coquet.
Danielle Legros Georges is an Associate Professor in the Creative Arts in Learning Division of Lesley University; and a visiting faculty member of the William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences, University of Massachusetts—Boston. She is the author of a book of poems Maroon (Curbstone Press, 2001). Recent poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in The Bill Moyers Journal (PBS Program), The Caribbean Writer’s Special Issue on Haiti, Consequence, and The Women’s Review of Books. She lives in Boston, and enjoys hiking in the nearby Blue Hills.
