DENSITY OF BONES

What is it about bones that make them stay sunk and submerged after so many years? Rather than rise up; fly?
Did sharks, clamp jaws, buzz saws for teeth, circling round human cargo ships, digest their souls along with the flesh when they were thrown overboard by white hands getting rid of an non-productive milk cow or sterile steer, just more flotsam and jetsam for the waves, bait, training the sharks to follow their wake from sea to sea. Or did the bones leave their spirits and souls ship-bound with the chained and stained ancestry to tell stories of their passing.
The memory is fading---
And now the water is over our heads again, and
we tread on bones, stand on legs, pelvis’, shoulders and skulls; learn first hand the plaints of ancestors- the tones of our voices and cries are ancient, edged with sorrow and impatience and salt and barnacles that rip and eat into our throats.
History repeats, they
Are drowning
Again, we
Are drowning again. But
This time WE
have to
bury the dead, light
funeral pyres, torch mounds of
history texts, burn Sharazad Ali, Conrad, Beecher
Stowe, place
bic and
butane lighters to pages yellowed
and dated.
Let the
women ululate, keen-
lifting wails throughout nighttime skies;
holy nights with grief being
An invited dinner guest- the
only one eating.

Let the
men beat their chest-
posing strong and fierce, put
the babies to sleep with dreams of fulfilled
specters that kiss melting black, brown and tan cheeks.
And the water rises
again and we stand at the shores of our steps looking out of the 9th ward, the
Bayview, Deep East Oakland, Marin City, Richmond at
incoming waves. Outside
saviors leave favors
on porches, street corners, alley-
ways filled with voodoo hush and
jumbie wishes. Catacomb
dolls float by kicking chicken feet; flowers,
burning cigars trailing ash, family
pictures drift along on ripples.
Ears drunk on red
punch, Cisco and malt liquors, dande-
lion wine don’t hear judgment
coming on the crest of a wave, but
salvation.
Sailors of the SS. Black Continuum, sing
plantation lullabies, look down
into pools, lift our limbs,
wondering
at the density of bones