{"id":3281,"date":"2022-02-18T12:53:49","date_gmt":"2022-02-18T20:53:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/?p=3281"},"modified":"2024-12-12T10:18:58","modified_gmt":"2024-12-12T18:18:58","slug":"three-poems-by-yusef-komunyakaa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/three-poems-by-yusef-komunyakaa\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Poems by Yusef Komunyakaa"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"issue21\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Found in\u00a0Willow Springs 21<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back to Author Profile<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

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Three Poems by Yusef Komunyakaa<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

The Cops Call Him Charlie<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

An olive grove’s heavy greenness<\/p>\n\n\n\n

remains his only country & flag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Without family or friends, fifty<\/p>\n\n\n\n

years after the woman on the wharf<\/p>\n\n\n\n

waved to him & the roots of acacia<\/p>\n\n\n\n

embraced her, this old greek’s<\/p>\n\n\n\n

moored in the Tropic of Capricorn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Digging in a sandpile street workers<\/p>\n\n\n\n

left for Monday morning,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

he glances at the faces of women<\/p>\n\n\n\n

trying to dodge confusion & wet cement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They spin away from the weight of his eyes<\/p>\n\n\n\n

pulling them into his soft torture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His dirty clothes & grimy hands<\/p>\n\n\n\n

flag down three petty officials<\/p>\n\n\n\n

who write in their notebooks<\/p>\n\n\n\n

& leave him talking to a lamppost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smudged eyeglasses<\/p>\n\n\n\n

posed cockily on an orange beanie,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

he’s barefoot,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

speaking to someone in a different world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He stands in the middle of the street,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

leaning on a shovel, surveying the scene<\/p>\n\n\n\n

like a foreman, as cars screech & burn<\/p>\n\n\n\n

rubber around him. I walk away, afraid,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

wondering if we suffer the same illness:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seeing without having to see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

protection of Movable Cultural Heritage<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Time-polished skulls of Yagan & Pemulwy<\/p>\n\n\n\n

sit in a glass cage wired to a burglar alarm<\/p>\n\n\n\n

in Britain, but the jaws of these two<\/p>\n\n\n\n

resistance leaders haven’t been broken<\/p>\n\n\n\n

into a lasting grin for the Empire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under fluorescent lamps they are crystal balls<\/p>\n\n\n\n

into which one can gaze & see the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With eyes reflected into empty sockets<\/p>\n\n\n\n

through the glass, I read repeatedly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

an upside down newspaper<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

headlining Klaus Barbie & Karl Linnas<\/p>\n\n\n\n

& Bernhard Goetz. The skulls sit<\/p>\n\n\n\n

like wax moulds for Fear & Anger\u00ad-<\/p>\n\n\n\n

beheaded body-songs lament &<\/p>\n\n\n\n

recall how mindy grass once sang to feet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, staring from their display case,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

they still govern a few broken hearts<\/p>\n\n\n\n

wandering across the Nullarbor Plain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Killed fighting for love of birthplace<\/p>\n\n\n\n

under a sky ablaze with flying foxes<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

& shiny crows, they remember the weight<\/p>\n\n\n\n

of chains inherited from the fathers<\/p>\n\n\n\n

of bushrangers, how hatred runs into<\/p>\n\n\n\n

the soul like red veins in the eye<\/p>\n\n\n\n

or thin copper threads through money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

February in Sydney<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Dexter Gordon’s tenor sax<\/p>\n\n\n\n

plays ”April in Paris”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

inside my head all the way back<\/p>\n\n\n\n

on the bus from Double Bay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Round Midnight, <\/em>the ’50’s,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

cool cobblestone streets<\/p>\n\n\n\n

resound footsteps of Bebop<\/p>\n\n\n\n

musicians with whiskey-laced voices<\/p>\n\n\n\n

from a boundless dream in French.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bud, Prez, Webster & The Hawk,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

their names run together<\/p>\n\n\n\n

like mellifluous riffs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Painful gods jive talk through<\/p>\n\n\n\n

bloodstained reeds & shiny brass<\/p>\n\n\n\n

where music is an anesthetic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unreadable faces from the human void<\/p>\n\n\n\n

float like torn pages across the bus<\/p>\n\n\n\n

windows. An old anger drips into my throat,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

& I try thinking something good,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

letting the precious bad<\/p>\n\n\n\n

settle to the salty bottom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another scene keeps repeating itself:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I emerge from the dark theatre,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

passing a woman who grabs her red purse<\/p>\n\n\n\n

& hugs it to her like a heart attack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tremolo. Dexter comes back to rest<\/p>\n\n\n\n

behind my eyelids. A loneliness<\/p>\n\n\n\n

lingers like a silver needle<\/p>\n\n\n\n

under my black skin,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

as I try to feel how it is<\/p>\n\n\n\n

to scream for help through a horn.<\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":25234,"featured_media":1008,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpo365_audiences":[],"wpo365_private":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3281"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25234"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3281"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37631,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3281\/revisions\/37631"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}