The dead are a reservoir of secrets which they hoard
like limes in invisible caves. The dead
are disciplined and close rank like catenaries.
Occasionally, a night wind pilfers soft words
streamed from their occult of mysteries. The dead
avoid all eye contact yet the light the dead see
is all lantern that taunts and calls them back
across the firmament. They sing at the foot
of myrtle trees and read the classics
evenings in dentist chairs. They smell like
disinfectant. Like us, they open their hooked
mouths to taste first rain, a wide, thick
tongue like a dry countryside.
Urban Renewal (xciii.)
Major Jackson
Major Jackson is the author of A Beat Beyond: Selected Prose of Major Jackson edited by Amor Kohli. He is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University.