BLUFF CITY Poem by Claudia Keelan

"the same indignation that is said to have cleared the temple
once will clear it again…it seems as if no one has ever died in
America before; in order to die you must first have lived…"
- Henry David Thoreau
Plea for Captain John Brown

But it still doesn't explain why
It took the passive
resistance from that it took.
I was eight when he died in the city.
Dying on the outside, the gunshot
of that year killing the inside
of what constitutes my/ours
"The method is passive physically
but strongly active spiritually."
In that I had a way of seeing
attached to my feeling
paralyzed at the beginning
of Being.
"It is not the suffering
but that which comes from outside
which is remedy."
(the method) (the paralyzed will)
(of a child) (of a nation)
"We talked about it in India
and in Africa but the American
movement was—
unpremeditated, a natural,
a religious."
(meant staying inside) (a child)
(inside) (nation)

In that I had a way of seeing
attached to my feeling
where the world wouldn't start
immobilized
(inside a child nation)
"Then Moses said ‘the kids are dead.'
"It is not the suffering
but that which comes from outside
which is remedy."
The kids are dead.
(a child) (of a nation)
"And the other thing is
people were being killed
already, the Negroes
of Mississippi and I feel,
anyway, responsible."
"For while the nonviolent resister

is passive,
his mind and emotions
are always active."
At the beginning
of Being.


"Writers themselves always try to lessen the distance between their kind
and ordinary human beings. They so often assure us that every one is at
heart a poet and that the last poet will not die until the last human does."

In that I had a way of seeing
attached to my feeling
and when I couldn't see to feel,
I ceded the day to event.
Or I lost the trajectory
of the hours
huddled in a stingy minute
thought in a sound loop
the music all wrong
tho I'd given it way, my feeling
willingly, by the handful.
History is the gap
through which the lessons fall:
"Moses said ‘the kids are dead.'"

In that I had a way of seeing
attached to my feeling
but the dead bird just there and there
until I picked it up with a shovel
and buried it
in the street.

Its end written already, a thousand worms a coat
or jeweled shroud so that the leaves I pushed
over of what remained of its body
seemed unholy or I did,
performing last rites without the benefit of a bell or veil,
empty of blessed words. A false priest with a shovel
an evening falling/an evolution of the bodiless
/the decayed interior of a bird
the medium where I began to understand:

when he hit her
bringing the heel of his hand down
across the bridge of her nose
its safe to say he felt her skin
as an extension of his own
the slight pop the bones made shattering
hardly in competition with the sirens, the flight patterns
much less the—roaring? or simply the language?—
of his psyche, because he was all inside, he must have been,
ignoring the streetlight, the dogs and other people
walking and then shouting, his hand that instrument rising
almost detachedly, higher and higher
until the force was clean and attached to intention.
There is no safety in saying.

The wallet then almost a distraction
and the way he ran away
"trying to lessen the distance between"
(loping, looking over his shoulder)
"their kind"
(soul depicted)
"and ordinary human beings"
at the heap she made in the street.
Two boys skate over the spot today.
A black man they say
and they're ready for him
holding tree branches in their hands.
It's warm and green shows in the brown.
When I look again
they've tied the sticks together
and are sailing into town.
Bluff City.


Even without the windows open
I've been dreaming
behind bars that face the neighbor
my sleep had made
whole again.

I've resisted his story,
hurried inside to stop him
depicting the apparatus
of event and time
that left his body crushed
from the shoulders down.
He believes
that touch, in Japanese, R
E
I
K
I
can keep you in this world
and a nurse has slipped into mine,
simply the word "nurse"
and the hands she lay
on his forehead
15 years ago.
(Who believes in touch cannot)
(who cannot believe must)
I am reading the underlined
by Louise L. Hay he slipped
onto my porch:


SPINAL MISALIGNMENTS
5-C Fear of ridicule and humiliations I lovingly release others to
their own lessons.

Fear of expression.
Rejecting one's good I lovingly care for myself.
Overburdened. I am loved.
And I am safe.
In the dream I might have had
he has reclaimed his name, Butch,
and he and two boys
drive three to a cab,
two sticks, a gun and the intentionality
of a city,
fuschia scripture
mending earth to sky.
(God bless what is broken what cannot move,
God bless the reflection that is harmless
unattached to desire,
the minor delusions
that strengthen our humanity)

Lessen the distance

In that the outside disappeared completely
into the limbs of his body
so that when I see him in his chair in the sun
I know that it's day.


No dream possible
he's back (we're
back), or a version of us
"looking into your window with a knife" or further
down the street
"back from the army and looking for a friend."
"Something subdued,
halted in the weightlifter's
STOP THERE OR I'LL SHOOT
(I'm not kidding)
In the neighborhood's WATCH GROUP,
the names, the numbers we exchange.

Night in the flight patterns the steamboat
crying the violence turned
outward and upstairs, his cry/her cry
mine/the small boy's/night of the wheelchair
and the eyes he turns
to the stars at the end of the drive.
Night of nothing seen or felt,
the cries protracted in the spin
and the silence, the aftermath
protracted and protracted,
the whole body fed by it,
severed by the sleeping child.

The religion in expression
true or false. Religious tanks
moving up Poplar Avenue,
religion of curfew,
the monuments to memory
something wants to wreck.
The moot dismemberment
of Christ again,
in her arms, in Rome
so you see now there is nothing
left to recall but the shape
they write in the body.
Genetics suffering history,
cattlecar lowing towards
the museum. All the responsible pictures
promising your children
sitting, or standing, a place on the train.
I would like to invite you to lunch
I am your age
The world is a place I would like to step off of
There is forgetting to do
in my church
Been disabled
enjoy I think, common interests?

"You asked what happened to Rosa.
I think I can tell you.
You know the law
you say, well,
let's fight it.
It's that. That's
just the whole attitude.
A time when you decide you don't give a rap.
I don't live in_________________
but I'm in____________________
and I know why people fell in."

(a child) (of a nation)

She walked alone.
(at the corner)(I tried to pass)
(through) (the guards the crowd) (was quiet)
(I tried to squeeze) (past him)
(they raised his) (bayonet) (and they raised their)
(bayonets) (somebody yelling lynch
and lynch her) (Drag her to the etc.)
(the branch seemed safe to me) (a white lady)
(very nice) (put me on the bus) (a white man)
(patted me) (raised me) (said don't let them
see you cry.)


But it still doesn't explain why
it took the passive
resistance form it took
( I tried to squeeze) (past)


We talked about it in India
and in Africa but the American movement was—
unpremeditated, a natural, a religious. Over.


(And he raised his) (And they raised their)

I had not begun not believing
in a center, a self's
or this city's but thinking
to make one or find
one or only to find
one in the making.
What I love
I left singing
in the student gallery,
the elevator rising
away from the music I continued
to hear until I stepped off
in another place.
You divisible in the notes
you whistled among the bad
sculptures and I—
feet travelling a hallway. Song forgotten
and the elevator's ascent away
from what you had become—only a point,
not fixed, but a point—not ever
a place to return to.
This city's quick descent
to the Mississippi not a simile
for anything related to us,

as the bridge cannot
be a freedom stretching west
from the city of two dead kings
where last night the sun
fell into the river and shared
its light a while before
it went away.

The method is passive physically but strongly active spiritually.
(I tried to pass) (was quiet)
The aftermath creation of the beloved
(and he raised his(and they raised their
And aftermath creation of endless bitterness
(patted me(raised me(said(don't let them
see you

I hadn't know it would be a motel
on the edge of Memphis, turning away until he said no, there.
The Lorraine Motel, Rm. 306,
A wreath over the number
we were forced by the architecture
to start on the outside

to start at the end
of Martin's life, the well photographed
balcony leading
se
quence of
a a meta
morophosis of the
vis oral cul
ture and religious
tradition
to insure the retaining of an
a leg acy


in nerve, in language on to Rosa's bus
and the inside of his room,
artificial coffee memorialized in black plastic
If there is no struggle there is no
profess Am I not a sister