‘Touched by the Hood’ by Elizabeth Stelling
Response

Inspiration by Tyson West

NEGRO SPRITUALS SUNG BY A GROUNDSKEEPER

I

Deep burry booming though his bass
Rattled the walls of the flimsy black Baptist church
At the cross roads
With the dreadnaught explosions of a second coming
Kay Ellen’s father would still have called him “Boy”
Segregating the errant plantains weeding wooley background vegetation
Persisting among the hybrid tea roses
Of Mr. Jefferson’s pale academic gardens
Neatly lassoed in brick serpentine walls.
We eavesdropped his spirituals
Going down for Moses and
Swinging low for sweet Jesus’ ears and his own under
That late March 1968 web of warblers
Sweeping the insects that had chanced the spring sky
We prattled pink and white noise hugs on the bench
You held me soft and lacy
But stiffly to the dark echoes of sin and salvation
Ricocheting over the red brick and glossy green magnolias.

II

Bewitched we carlosed these last forty years
With our soft goodbye
And the memory of my lips against your smooth firm sighs
Parting not in thrown china or curses and a three day drunk
I did give a damn and sensed as you did too
Your mother could not groom my father’s garden with such precision
As they could sorrow or sing.
We now find each other in the dance of rare earths
The call of the computer
Machines built to calculate the trajectory of artillery projectiles
To explode against the cosmic background radiation’s warm glow
Soft passions of our pairing
And smooth passions of our parting
We both can draw social security—a gift of misspent days at work
Jesus was more to you than an a capella
Song of an African voice a week
Before the execution of your king and his resurrection
Which even now must follow
My Lady’s first full blush after
The vernal equinox.

‘Heart’ by Elizabeth Stelling
Inspiration

Response by Tyson West

Psst… Hey Sailor, Up Here.

I

Port of Call—Seattle
If old soldiers never die,
What happens to old sailors?
Sea breezes never run aground restlessing
Past the roaring forties, into the false fifties or solitary sixties
And an old sailor still dreams of striding the surf
On the long shot island fading on the cracked and yellowing chart
Where the dead man’s gold lies buried for sure.
So sprawl in red weather whiskers mottled and grey
Dreaming of young lions on the African beach,
Of the brown thrust of the Amazon into the loins of the old Atlantic
Hoping to catch a tyger in the rummy mist.
Some how geriatric gobs always drift off alone
On long walks on the beach
Wondering about the navigator’s sobriety instead of their own,
And why the tree stump decays
With a hole in the shape of a heart.
Old sailors never die
They just keep sailing through
The heart on the horizon
Toward the fonds and lanai
Concealing the laughter of the bare breasted native girls
And unfound pieces of eight.

II

Port of Call—Kyoto

winter wind stump torn
sea framed in a heart shaped hole
nothing shapes white waves

III

Port of Call—Marseilles

Once I abide in love, I’ve dwelt in joy,
While suffering the strange shapes of decay.
My tree, I watched the sea and sand destroy
As I abide in love. I dwell in joy;
Winds rasped and cut her slow grown wood to toy
A void into a heart shaped hole and play
When I abide in love, I’ll dwell in joy
While admiring the strange shapes in decay.