[Poetry] Two Poems by R. Flowers Rivera

POETRY - ISSUE FOUR

Vera Geneva, 1939

R. FLOWERS RIVERA

What I am certain of. It is hot.
today’s my birthday. I am six.
Rain and more rain. I can hear
what the stain glass hides.
Sounds like T. Ray peeing
off the back porch when the night is
dark and Fofo has all the sheets
balled ‘tween her knees. I have to pee.
Mama said to wait. I got better sense
than to ask again. Reverend
Fox is shouting to the congregation.
Only big-tittied, rawboned women
Catch the Holy Ghost. I will have to
wait. I got the right build but
My chest is flat. Two hoecakes.
Mama never falls out. Her eyes just cry
quiet tears. One at a time.
I have to pee. Reverend Fox is
calling for me to come. I move to go.
Mama’s hands stay my way. Her eyes
say no. She’s shaking her head not yet.
We had to wait four hours, but
yesterday Miss Reena marcelled mama
some pretty curls. The kind I can get
“soon as you get a job.” There’s a stray
piece sticking out at her temple. It could
use one good bump with more
heat. Reverend Fox says,
“God is calling. Who will listen?”
I look around. Mama pops my legs,
faces me front. My panties feel damp.
I hope it’s sweat. I try harder
to hold still, to listen. He booms,
“Give the glory to God.” Six elders in dark serge
suits and white gloves take their place
in the aisles. Two and two and two.
Right, middle, left. They pass the plates.
Glory is money. God is in a little room,
back of the church, behind a closed door.
I want to be a deacon, so I can see God, too.

I Wanted to Take You Home

To show you wisteria knotted like snakes,
dirtclods you could eat, burnt air
heavy enough to prop up porches, exactly
what a crowbar could do to a windshield.

To show you how to listen, a way to recognize
the absence of sound when the dead travel
among pussy willows like slow-moving katydids,
why the wind is no colder than my drawl.

No, more than that, I wanted you
to stick your arm out the window
use spit to test the sky for rain
so you could learn the way and know

whether or not to worry about fixing
your face and fussing with your hair.
I wanted the midday sun to steal
back that pale band of skin

about your wrist. The one
you cling to like it’s your life,
so you could have some idea of the attention required
to wash and season, the time necessary to coax

flavor from a kettle of greens. All this I wanted
to let you see, so you could have a notion of my place
among something more clan than tribe,
so you could understand the quiet

rage of my teeth and nails on your neck,
mimicking the scrape and spark of a blade against stone as
I pinned you against the car door, cussed your name,
that night that stretched away

like a tarmac of crude stares. Hot,
mournful, unalterable. Right before
I said It’s best you leave. Now,
go. And your voice came back

full of silence and trees and clear, clear water
baby, I’m not a tease. I wanted to walk with you
down gravel roads, past the military base,
up the swell to the neon cross, show you

that very sparrow you’ve heard me rasp about.
No hustling, no chicanery. I wanted you
to know the slow corruptions
I would have to face. Every hell

I would have to divorce and embrace
just to be with you. I don’t know how we failed
each other with this sharecropper’s lack
of imagination.