He Reads Every Street Sign Aloud

A vast country on fire, cast with smoke,
the willow tree and the water moccasin

are markers for my spirit, after the path
my feet are covered in quiet burns

but I still have feet. In April, three Louisiana
black churches, pressed down, shaken together,

hard coals, dots in the southern air at night.
They are my little brothers, my older sisters,

the Passover giants. I write this letter to them.
Be shrewd, my siblings, for now the mountains

you sprout into have only just begun.
Drink the sunflower wine of Jubilee

as you go to face your enemies, and know
their tables are everywhere. Rise, the dark

interpolated yeast of salvation, which rends
its flesh whenever your flesh is rendered.

Generations of seeds, like paving stones, fall from
where you are broken, they cry out under the streets

for the rain, for the green again. I heard it when
I walked through Youngstown and my dad said,

“Everything is a museum to me”, which is a way
of saying that all reformation isn’t eventual.