To Poet Cyprian Kamil Norwid

(From a letter written to America in 2021, in April)

Cyprian (Polish brethren poet from our past)
can I tell you there is a heft to your o!
A whole poem in the exclamation o! Here
a mouth is tunnel for change. The mouth
a vessel, this o! with implicit no and groan,
hummed from the backs of throats, sounding
like rope. The rope which would swing
black men like unlit lanterns in the Southern prison
of night where white men hunted after twilight.
Freedom’s noose bloomed bruised blues
in your, night coming – a black night with a black
face! I too write a letter to America, asking
how the land of the free maybe in vain, asking
definition between lynched and hanged? Asking
o! This poem is also song, and dirge, asking
a repeated chorus o! Humming the gospels
of the South, as Aretha Franklin and Mahalia
Jackson’s throats pelt out soulful melodies,
grievance sore and John Brown’s soul does not go
marching on. It is April and there is still no old
John Brown, no Glory, Glory, Hallelujah. There is no
spring, only cold sleet as I too write a letter to America.
o! Cyprian now men die in chokeholds and fluttering breath
has replaced the fluttering feet of the hanged,
muttering I can’t breathe, breath flailing
like the beheaded chicken flapping into death.
Cyprian, know we held our breath at George’s
trial as four more died between lawyer’s summary
and verdict and know that these too are spectacle,
now the noose is a knee on the back of a throat.