From the Fishouse

for Jimmie Lee Jackson
18-26 February 1965, Marion and Selma, Alabama

A cloud of starlings drifts from the river,

at first, a smudge on the sky
or the hospital window,

then more definite,

contracting then scattering
like pain.

Nuns ghost, white-robed

as night-riders in the farm-edge pines
haunting the forest along the river,

like lilies on Cahaba’s shoals.

…

Whenever he wakes someone else is there
just out of view

prayer drowned in the rasp of breath

a song like breaking glass.

Wings clench in the fluorescent tubes,
flutter of shadows

the state patrol colonel
darkening the bed

handcuffs on the rail,
a warrant for a tongue.

Then wings,
blown smoke

gathering somewhere
just out of view.

…

At the church just after dark

hymns, then the night march
across the square

to sing through the jailhouse window
and February to their brother

who can hear them in their pews,
hear them descend

to the waiting mayor and police chief,
the state troopers who bullhorn them back.

When the reverend kneels to pray,
one patrolman swings his club,

all the lights go down.

…

Photograph strobes
carve their bodies from the dark,

break and pucker of serge and wool
on arms boxed

to catch the blows,

night-sticks straight
from the flex of uniform sleeves

coats taut between the blades,
white helmets’ gleam

and above, a heaven of breath
and steam and smoke from which

dark feathers
then spreads

coughing dense night air
at the cusp of the lens

carving through the barrel

to spread the shutters blind

…

No one sees the congregation scatter

or the troopers chase

to the river or church
or blockhouse café

No one sees the bottles flying
as they climb the stairs

or the bricks in the troopers’ affidavits

No one sees the clubs

or the thousand starlings
smoking at the lights

No one sees the old woman
swinging Cokes on the troopers’ heads

or falling from their sticks

or the old man lunging in their affidavits
or falling

or the young one, the grandson
step in to catch the blow

or take the gun

…

They see the flash and kickback

Jimmie Lee folding in the glass

of the cigarette machine

tube light halo, electric hum

Smoke feathers

singing glass

the grandfather’s face arriving, arriving

in the intermittent light.

…

No one sees them drag him down the stairs
and into the street

but that is where they found him

No one sees them beat so hard
clubs splinter

skin and spit and blood
through the haze of breath, bodies’ steam

spit half-syllables
that echo from the church face,

the courthouse, tangled strange

and having
found each other

whole

as if the refugees of bone and skin
and breath

gathered in the eaves
and hollows of the dark

coalesce
so their blows return

ghost wings at their ears

…

Blood beading arc-lights’ flicker, feathertips of faint
in the road’s warm pitch, wings’ sheen and the splay

of fingers, starlings descending from the dark,
assembling in his mother’s warmth, having learned

her hush-now timbre but saying things he can’t make sense.

He keeps saying their recurring sentences, what he hears
in the whisper songs at the lips of his ears.

The doctors open him again, one last
bullet, infection nesting there.

The pavement warm beneath.
Pulse of footfall. Wings.

…

Dark beats in the overhead lights
till the room is night and sheen

that folds from stars
then sky

into Selma’s oaks
and the girders of the bridge

and the churches’ steeples,
and into all the pines

from there to Marion,

gathering in the stands
around the farm

where his grandfather
follows the preachers

back through the woods.

…

February silvers all their bruises.
Breath curls into the pines,

into the murmuring dim

and when they slow
everything is quiet

and he can see the towns,
the map forming on their lips.

And when they speak
he sees

their mouths are full of birds.