BOBBY JOE, MONTHS LATER
By James E Cherry Three years later, I browse the shelves of the downtown library in the shadows of late afternoon where Bobby Joe materializes among jazz cd’s, new book releases and the New York Times. He has stumbled through its public doors dishelved, burdened with bags under arm as if he were a scale and life had found him wanting, dreams with holes punched in them. We slap hands, take the edge off awkwardness with idle talk, before I tell him that I’d hope to see him again, that I’d written a book, Loose Change, that one of the poems was about him. He shrugs, turns down the corners of his mouth, rubs his chin, remarks: that poetry is some deep stuff and that he wanted me to take a look at something. We seize a corner table near the periodicals where Bobby Joe pulls a small black and red book from his bag. I finger the book, peruse a few pages, flip back to the front cover: Zen Meditation Book. I tell him that this is in the same family as poetry, may even be a first cousin, just another way of being in the world. I give the book back, but Bobby Joe tells me he has no need for it anymore, that he could live it, if he wanted to. I promise to carry a copy of Loose Change in the trunk of my car for the next time. Bobby Joe pushes himself up, gathers his bags, nods: next time and heads for the new releases where he stands before a wall of books until he becomes one of them. DREAM OF MY FATHER By James E Cherry My father looks the same as the day he died. Such is the nature of dreams. Actually, he looks like the man who dragged eight hour shifts of union dues and assembly lines through the front door at day’s end, frowned at the daily paper, grunted the six o’clock news, whispered grace over supper around a square dinner table. I’m at the head of the table this time. He sits to my left works a plate of cabbage and potatoes, wears the same mask the day I quit the high school basketball team in mid-season, was caught smoking pot in the basement, broke the promise of a college diploma into several pieces. I offer him the roast beef on my plate, but he says nothing, moves away from the table and when I rise to run after him, daybreak catches me around the ankle leaves me sprawled beside the bed to count drops of sunlight spilling from my eyes. THE SEGREGATED WORD By James E Cherry My sister calls from Nashville, asks where is she in my latest collection of poems, Loose Change her voice cloudy as a winter afternoon in 1968 where we climb steps to the public library, enter into its sacred space, follow the memory of our feet to the “Colored” section. I pet Clifford the Big Red Dog, look for my mom from the top of Jack’s Beanstalk, pat my tummy for a house of chocolate cake instead of a gingerbread one. I watch my sister and others, their Black faces bowing at the altar of study, fidget away from them into a land peopled by more books where a white lady with a sharp nose and round glasses rules over them. “Get back over there. Nigger.” Her words welt across my face, take aim at the other cheek before my hand is in my big sister’s and we’re back behind the safety of color lines. She rearranges me in my seat, strides across the aisle where her words grab handfuls of the white woman’s hair, their voices crescendo of curse and epithet. She reappears with a smile and an armful of books, instructs me to “read these” as I open bound leather, where a solitary tear staggers from my eye onto the red nose of a reindeer, its glow neon against the night, my hands grasping for stars and the moon around Rudolph’s neck, my life, strapped upon the back of the wind. © James E Cherry *** James E Cherry is the author of five books: a collection of short fiction, a novel and three volumes of poetry. His latest collection of poetry, Loose Change, was published in 2013 by Stephen F. Austin State University Press. His prose and poetry has been featured in numerous journals and anthologies both in the U.S. as well as in England, France, China, Canada and Nigeria. He has been nominated for an NAACP Image Award, a Lillian Smith Book Award and was a finalist for the Next Generation Indie Book Award for Fiction. Cherry has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Texas at El Paso. His novel, Edge of the Wind, is forthcoming in October 2016 from Stephen F Austin University Press. He lives in Tennessee. Visit: http://www.jamesecherry.com.
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Kimberly WilliamsKimberly has been fortunate to travel to half the Spanish-speaking countries in the world by the time she was forty. As a traveler into different cultures, she has learned to listen ask questions, and seek points of connections. This page is meant to offer different points of connections between writers, words, ideas, languages, and imaginations. Thank you for visiting. Archives
October 2020
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