White Lady
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Something to kill songs & burn the guts, to ride & break the hippocampus. Something to subdue the green freedom of crows at Slaughterhouse Creek. Milk mixed with gin or metho— something to finish the job guns & smallpox blankets didn't do, to prod women & seduce gods to dance among trees, letting silver bark uncurl into an undressed season. Something to undermine those who refuse to dangle brass breastplates from their necks like King Billy. Something to erase the willy wagtail from vesperal leaves. No one can sniff the air & walk miles straight to water anymore. Their heads fill with wings & then they touch down again like poisoned butterflies bumping into bougainvillea. Fringe dwellers languish, piles of old clothes under gums. White Lady is their giddy queen, her arms flung around sleeping children, ruling dreams with an iron scepter, her eyes screwed into them like knots in bloodwood.
Yusef Komunyakaa, the subject of this issue of Callaloo, teaches at Princeton University. His most recent book of poems is Taboo: The Wishbone Trilogy, Part I. The numerous prizes, awards and honors he has received for his poetry include a chancellorship with the American Academy of Poets, the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters (Wesleyan University), the William Faulkner Prize (Universite Rennes, France), the Kingsley Tufts Award for Poetry, and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
