Suite in Green, for Elijah McClain

by CARLOS SIRAH
in Fall 2023

INTRO-GREEN
My name is Elijah
McClain. That’s my
house. I’m an intro-
Vert. I’m just diff-
Errant, that’s all.
Whatever you do
don’t kill him
again.

COMING UP ELI
Boy as Cheetah
Stalks his prey
There, living
-room adventure
Momma, runs
Boy as Cheetah
leaps, praying
falls into Momma,
falling,
laughing.

ELIJAH SHOUT
Sunlight spills into a bedroom.
Elijah cries out, Rock!
Elijah: Rock, you hear me?
Elijah: Rock, O Rock?
Elijah: Where are you Rock?

INDEPENDENT INQUIRY
Woman, rose-colored housecoat,
silver hair-bonnet, ties
trailing behind, guilded butter-
flies attend. Table, 5-inch-ream
shiny paper, Mother peels
reads, highlights, marks, circles
strikes, questions.

ROSE OF SHENEEN
Sheneen enters
the room called Vast,
Adorned with, clothes-
pins,Rose-hued, bearing
5-inch-ream, photos. Casts
a line across the vastness, attaches
every photo.

PARADE
Elijah, age two, stands in the doorway.
Come inside, you are safe and beloved.
Every creature enters.
Mammal, Reptile, Avian, and Insect.
Welcome, friends.

THAT ELIJAH WAVE
Hype-man tears through
crowd, stands inside circles
of Who wit me?
Echoes. Wit me!
That Elijah wave!
It go like this. This.

ROSE OF SHENEEN (Reprise)
That vast room
photo-filled
Hall of Elijah,

rose

this exhibition,
private, Smile
after Smile the edge
of vast,
another
mother enters.

ELIJAH
Elijah enters
Elijah bows.
Elijah strums his guitar
Elijah bows.
Exit.
One minute of stillness.
Elijah enters.
Elijah bows.
Elijah plucks his violin.
Exit.

ELIJAH ROCK

slit the drum-
skin, slide in-
side, two his
favorite stones

stich the drum-
skin, sidle the
strap over you
strike that snare
again.
for Elijah

Carlos Sirah is a writer and performer from the Mississippi Delta. His work encounters exile, rupture, displacement, and migration. A 2017-2018 Lambda Literary Fellow, Playwrights Center Core Apprentice, and recent Millay Colony residential fellow, Sirah has performed and developed work with a wide array of place-based, social justice and arts organizations across the country from New York to Virginia to Arkansas to California. He is a facilitator with Warrior Writers, a community of veterans who make art. Sirah received his MFA from Brown University in 2017.

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