My Prow Towards the City/Woman on the Bus/My Relatives for the Most
by FREDERICK B. HUDSON
in Spring 2021
Tafari Melisizwe, Strike, 2018
My Prow Towards the City
A song boat
Swaying in the canebrakes
We plucked them ourselves
And left no Pharaohs' sons behind us
Our children reach over the sides
For jewels for their mothers' beauty
Black gold agates painted with the moon
And the crocodile's tail the boat is a harvest
The horn a goat feast's last remainder
Blow the horn a triumphant pace of victory rhythm
Then fill the horn with mangoes
We march this craft across the tides
The sun under our oars
This time let there be no huddling
Among each other and starvation
This time let there be no leaping
for freedom tides this time let there be no crying
but rather let us weave a sunrise robe
and let its bent colors comb
the grey dusk cities of the West
to remember our ancestors who soared above their burial stones.
Woman on the Bus
Walking shoulders over crutches
She had one leg showing
The other had escaped her
Flesh and bone back to dark process
The hospital could not explain
To her. So they just broke the news
Over her head in a vase
Of other people's flowers.
She carries a girl-child
Limp, proud in one hand
Walking shoulders over crutches
Putting rubber tips in front
Over men's feet.
The child is crying then smiling
Bent over her lap—the one leg.
When she shops, she must have trouble
Holding the bag in one hand
Groceries slipping to one side,
Then falling towards the ground.
Help her I wonder
Cries
the thin obsessive nerve
Between my lungs.
Scaffold my toes.
Pull out her leg.
Make me another navel.
My Relatives for the Most
My relatives for the most
Part
Were not pillars holding up stone roofs
But rather planks stepped on
Taken for granted
Until the splinters lifted up
Inclined and pricked an intruding toe.
My relatives for the most part
Were not words tossed
Through the corn and strawberries
Under the mules' feet
Making ink out of water and wait
When they grew something that had no claim to share
My relatives for the most part
Knew nothing of taking life
Away with a pointed scorn stick
They just knew whittling ways
Of making wood
Fly away in the night
From logs that became generals and boats
That held their tongues and hulls tight
About the rich human waste
That kept itself under outhouses
Rather than make the corn and strawberries
Stop the white man's mule stop
In his traces.
Frederick B. Hudson is a management consultant specializing in nonprofit development. His previous publications were included in The New York Times, Massachusetts Review, Freedomways, among many others.