Julie Fay
Genesis: North Carolina
“Why can’t I see that black kid’s face?”
“Who is God anyway? Why’s grass
not another color? Was green made or what?
“You can,” I say, “Don’t look for lighter skin,”
adjust the rearview mirror, take her in,
fix the posture of her vowels, try to wipe
the southern off her lips, speed
through green tobacco fields
in back of buses that mix kids,
past Christian schools that don’t.
Then it’s time for last night’s dreams:
hers was of a small green ghost
that came and kissed her on the lips.
Mine’s too frightening to tell:
the hurricane that struck last week
fell first as rain’s soft patter to fatten
jungle leaves, crossed the sea, gathered
three hundred years’ drowned voices,
Gambians’. This voracious hunger
landed at our shore, ate our pines,
spat them out like sucked-clean bones
and cats and wrens and fish, threw their
vengeful shoulders at our door. As if
I had answers to any of these questions.
Page(s) 130
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