Poem #8: East Knoxville is a Cemetery
My heart
beats
in hues of
Knoxville
Tennessee - all I see, everything I’ve ever
felt
In the colored section of town
(east)
there’s a cemetery
The cemetery
stretches, taut against gravity and disconnectedness
and the prayer-filled blood of my
great-grandmother
The cemetery
stretches
from block to block
mind to mind
ruined, abandoned home
to
ruined, inhabited home
The headstones are
mailboxes
with the surnames of those
who never escaped this aching
town of bones
town of beauty so
devastating, it hurts to look at
The groundskeeper is
me - furiously, fiercely, fearfully
writing down the elder’s names
so they are never
forgotten
so they are never laying
in a plot
unmarked, unloved, un-remembered
In the shadow of the Smokies
in the hollow pit of my lungs
in Knoxville
Tennessee - all I see, everything I’ve ever
felt