When someone’s son becomes a meat
offering on our block, they
hire one of us to scrub the blood
away – can understand that

but they’ve been scrubbing us away
painting over bronzed cherubs

even the tomatoes Italians planted
before they turned white uprooted
, their coagulated roses trimmed
into a respectable fence

as if
no thing happened here. They get
to twenty-first century homestead, pilgrim
, pogrom, genocide

our dead are ghosts

though we were ghosts to them before
dying

they will say nothing
to their children and when
they are petulantly rebellious, parents
will say nothing of note happened here
before you
insist never knew what makes prime rare
.

The agent winks she’s putting the Abba
in Abattoir”: others say “Aba-T” is
where “the noir’s all gone
”!?
When blood sullies their planters of
greenery while someone’s son’s mother
and a well-practiced coterie bawl too
loud and too long, they call the
to be protected from, from

 
 
Listen to Rosamond S. King read this poem:

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