when I see curtis in august dat yellowbone day after de rain in five rivers
leaning against dat blue wood door and he show me he sore foot how it ban up
say it pain him like hell and creak the hinge so ah peep it how it bandage
and how foot fly does zoot there so in his earthen room with the linoleum and smoke
I never did know dat 2 month later I getting this message in winter
when the cold have teeth and the grey does come down like a ol’man resting after lunch.
it choke me right here so and a couldn’t ‘ven talk
never thought it would hol’ me so
but no matter how you stretch and bend it
family come first
that same curtis we did love the same rockers and roots
that was heavy down in 79
is he who uses to ram bass on eight track and tape tape gi mi
is he one dusk in new street by the ravine say fellas leh we go an get some dead
dead as in chicken fried! and had us walk all round the indian farmlands of tacarigua
past unfinished villages and the unprimed masonary of slow houses
red brick dust and the dirt road we trod
seeking the smell of burning oil
and creole seasoning
and was take curtis take us to some backyard place like a slaughtery
and buy up a few bag a frozen fowl
and we now glum and despondent but laughing all the way home about how we been got
dead mean chicken live or dead back then but dead mean curtis dead today
and today I put on my long coat and went out into the night to teach
and all the while feeling the rumble of this dead
this sudden tug as if curtis and I were attached by some tough gossamer web
that sudden so it snap
and he gone reeling
reeling
that august day I snap him leaning on the brown bottom door, he had plans
said he woulda break down the ol house he father built with my mother and rebuild it
because the wood was rot and the rain did leak and this land is ours
and I wondered then, wee poopa , but you foot
you foot like it weeping black rain and I know sorefoot from long time
when it so it doh heal
mother mabel from champs fleur had one a bad one that never heal
it use to run pus
and she often bouce it on a bench when she ketch spirt with goblet in hand
in church on Sunday night
is curtis he father give the keys to the truck when forklift did jook out he life on the port
and curtis turn man
see him they
he did always love car an mechanical thing
