POEM


- Sterling Plumpp


Poems are not places.

There are no maps for centuries

where the geography of skin

is anonymous in memory.

I am a secondhand dream

in concrete slabs of silence.

Somewhere bones speak

for my name/over fibers

of their secrets. My poems

are wanderers, meandering

in crevices between distances

and tombs. Where my voice

is bound with hammering against

the anvil of truth.


Poems are bridges, neon

reaches acrosss worlds

where language seeks

a voice for itself. Where words

are steps up towers

of perception. I exist

in language I invent

out of ruins. Out of

the nameless sand wind

scatters as my soul.

I exist in lines of spirits.

Who gathers in longings

blues singers peddle for

sweat. I exist, landless,

cropping my dreams in soil

from distances and silence

only travelers of the Middle Passage

own.




from Johannesburg & Other Poems.
Reprinted by permission of Another Chicago Press.Copyright © 1991, 1993