The Cachoeira Tales and Other Poems by Marilyn Nelson

Author:Marilyn Nelson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: LSU Press
Published: 2005-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Through the Wormhole

I was alone on a cobblestone street,

rushing to the place I’d been told I’d meet

the tall, dark, handsome stranger of my dreams,

when I heard the far whispering of drums.

So faint, so faint, as faint as a heartbeat,

they called, in words I knew. I told my feet

to do their stuff, running past closed blue doors,

not away from, but toward a universe

I knew awaited me through the wormhole

I’d fall into when a door in a white wall

swallowed me, like a Wonderland cliche.

So faint, so faint, the drums. And then I lay,

surrounded by the drumming of bare feet,

in a room scented with incense and sweat.

The drums, the drums throbbed in my arteries,

calling again onto living bodies

the Holy Ones who answer to black names.

Ka-doom. Ka-doom, doom, doom. They came,

as they have come for untold centuries,

to ride the bodies of their devotees,

crossing the threshold between here and God.

Mounted, I felt my identity fade,

a star on the horizon of true self.

Another I takes flesh, another will,

in this steed I control with gentle reins,

to speak for me. My name is . . .

The phone rang.

It was the desk: My suitcase had been found.

I tipped the bellman, locked the door, lay down

in bed again, then jumped back up to pee.

What should be made of this ability

our people seem to have, of mediumhood?

I checked the mirror, and went back to bed.

Can rational science explain the gift

of being ridden, being spirit-possessed?

Is it mumbo-jumbo mysticism,

or a true path rejected by racism?

What do the gods say? I thought thoughts like these,

and those . . . and theys . . . And then I piled up Zs.

I need to pick up something at the store . . .

I need to pick up something at the store . . .

I need to pick up something at the store . . .

I enter through the automatic door,

steer past the florist, deli, bakery,

fish market, butcher, and greengrocery,

putting things in my cart, wondering why

the world is so screwed up. In the Big Y

I find my weekly respite from the news.

Strolling along its glistening avenues,

humming along to denatured pop songs,

no news, no news, as long as I buy things

and leaf through tabloids in the cashier’s line.

No news, no news, an hour in the clean,

noon-bright, odorless, disinfected air.

No news of the madness raging out there.

Cereals, miles of plastic and cardboard

packaging, and a spotless floor,

and other shopping zombies, in a kind

of walking meditation, focused mind:

I need to pick up something from the store . . .

I need to pick up something from the store . . .

No news, no traces of insects or mice,

a world of one-way traffic, and of nice,

mostly white, smiling neighbors. And no news.

I muse along, silently psalmodize,

ask God, or Big Mama, to pull us through.

Opening a glass door, I reach into

the low-calorie, fat-free frozen treats,

and a swirling funnel of light and heat

sucks me breathlessly to the other side.

Where am I? Harmonia and Moreen’s guide

is talking to his watch, looking at me.

I know they know. They know I’ve secretly

incited riots in my fantasies,

fomented revolutions. He begins

to walk toward me.

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