George Tidmore​

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Lawful Border​

                                                         what a luxury not to understand / at a cellular level / to get to imagine

                                                         / the scar of a foil / bedspread / on cement 

                                                                                                                                            — Đenise Hạnh Huỳnh

 

It is not so hard to get from Atlanta in         Georgia         to Hama in Syria or Khartoum in Sudan

You take your scarlet jet                                                             & smooth sailing   for most of the way there

You cannot control a thing         (it is not your fault)        when that family you passed    

in your neighborhood once                                 is sent         (you do not know by what means)                              to the border                               (& I should not put it         so passively)                                                                        The crowds were bound to thin,                 you think,        wincing,  as you bathe browned potatoes

in rosemary & butter                       

                                                             You cannot imagine        your family at the border                          split

(I should not put it so passively)            You imagine           a boy

                                          sent home           his chest the same music           as his charred bedframe—

                            exactly, you get it:           there is no bedframe                                        only his char

 

        I do not know the difference           between Syria and Sudan,

                                                                                     not really,         I could try to guess if I landed there        

                                    but I can tell you about the distance         between me and the nearest hunter-

                                                                 green-vested fright frisker,             agent of a bone-fragile ice-

                                                                                            sheet State—          though for me it is a negligible

                                                                                                                               distance        

         I can tell you I have neighbors                    now strangled boundaries  

I can point you toward the cages                        (I should not imagine them so passively)

            & I wouldn’t even have to leave this chair   

                                                                                                                                You imagine the holding

                   room, a weeks-old diaper                          in the corner,                        

                                             exactly, you get it: there is no

                                                                                                                                 holding

                 The shape of a legal status           the palm of a tiny hand

                               grasping at a moth           er’s final butterfly

                                                           kiss                         

                                                                             I can suggest a re-route if there is traffic-

king in the streets               

                                                               I can tell you to avert your eyes—

                                                                                                                 can tell you that you will find en route           

      a metal bedframe                      

                                       piled with naked

                                                                                              nights   

 

                               

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Short stay under the shade of a heavenly Southern live oak

 

Spanish moss falls from the sky like fire because it is 

fire. A twitching huddle (under the fire) mumble gospel, raise their blazed

hands, their white slacks & white dresses tinged with that burnt bronze

color of ribs (prime ribs — from the fire).

 

You ain’t shit, devil! 

one roars, like a furnace, & they fall hysterically like blue 

to the green-mossed earth & their white slacks & white dresses tinge 

bronzer. It’s been a while since I’ve been back 

 

to the South. I rhyme with the strip malls & open my mouth

to drink the gnats (they laugh slow & twitch). I pluck red clay

from my mossy hairs & with it sculpt a burning burgundy God 

(because that’s how hot it gets). The huddle returns with evening, 

 

rumbling through peanut fields. Oak offers itself like a lamb to the heat — 

ha! Heat could care less than a dead goat! We always talk 

about heat (hot as all get-out, -ter than Georgia asphalt) but the burgundy 

God I throw clay at is sitting in a big house, cold 

 

as death, AC burning. What’s heat with no vengeance? Well, my house 

is big. My palm tree chiseled pyre — it bronzes itself indoors, it asks for spit 

to keep cool, it asks for a heavy-smoking burgundy God, it asks, let there be 

a lighter. Ha! That’s right! 

                                       You! Ain’t! Shit!

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Their white slacks & white dresses are only white because of the blinding light 

of the fire sky. They laugh & laugh (gospel) — when I’m back in the South 

(under fire sky) I watch them (dancing like oaks) & call them 

them. Like I’m not looking for shade, too. They return like evening 

 

because they are evening like everything. The trees, on their flaming 

spree, tell me watch out for the red bugs, I go on building God, burning

God, burgundy God, child of — 

Against my oak-dark hair the Spanish moss burns & burns, my God.

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