No Blood Shed of Fear

The sideline shuffle in Dallas,

able to move only as far as the person next to

you, you watched

when Kennedy's crimson confetti

summoned Jacqueline's cry

as motivated as the crowd

cheering. The linked

voices shooting, tongues flayed,

towards the only hope they were given.

Only after the burn

of metal faded, did she dawn black.

In the way of her mourning

ancestors. A strict stain,

the restriction

and comfort of tradition.

A forvigen tension

between widow and mother,

the threads of pity in their veils,

for who loves, grieves.

So similar thus my subjection to history,

is to the honor of dirt.

Scattered, one loved one

after another, salt of our Earth,

over my brother's urn.

The proud ovens, the last

to hear the clattering of laughter

in his bones.

We walk on.

Carrying the condolences

of those who'll never know

his daughters,

as ants trekking a corpse

to the colony.

One after another.

And if fortunetelling

had been my mother's past time,

I believe her still

to be brave and wise enough

to love all her children dearly.

Valiant enough

to receive from life, her pride,

to watch her son play on the Grand piano

where Doc Holliday died.

Even if God foretold

of an infant's blue body, of the silent

step, gaze

of strangers taking their blessings

form the bound baby,

sin never leaving their mind,

one after another, finding gratitude

in the child's cold glory,

my mother

would have never stopped loving.

As Mary knew:

Fate is grief on the shoulders

of years, passed

from one Death Mother

to another.

Our hearts, urns,

filled with the salt of our nature.

A rattling weight we carry in our cavities,

even as we rise as one:

part of the parade of light

and weightlessness we were promised.

This marching rhythm has played

to me as the pulsing of my blood.

The lullaby of my infancy, the DJ of my youth.

I have known my place

amongst the women unashamed to die.