Trouble the Water by Derrick Austin

Author:Derrick Austin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BOA Editions Ltd.
Published: 2016-02-09T00:00:00+00:00

numb but for the talons in its hair.

Ghost Slipper

Before merchant ships were bound to the harbor

by closed trade routes, they traveled east

with spring’s warm wind

for lapis lazuli, azurite, and indigo.

To acquire devil’s blue, painters crushed the stones

and mixed the powder with linseed oil.

Eastern goods were lost, so they used charred wood

to blacken the skins of demons

and render the flesh of Berbers, Moors, and Africans.

The oldest fresco in the city depicts the Queen of Sheba

received by Solomon and twelve jeweled retainers.

Though, in the story, he will be abandoned,

it is she who remains. His throne

faded in a flood, his pale pigments didn’t last a century.

Her hands, delicate as sparrows, gesture toward the ghost

of his slipper. She still loves what failed.

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