My New Black Magazine - NYU Black Renaissance Noire BRN-FALL-206 ISSUE RELEASE | Page 111

By
ARACELIS
GIRMAY

THIRD ESTRANGEMENT, REMEMBERING JONATHAN FERRELL
Today I left my house
to talk about love with my girl,
but already, her head in the news,
so I began the walk back, through the fog.
To my right, over my shoulder,
I heard the hunter whistling to his dogs.
He was near.
In the fog’s white heart,
I worried for my legs, their arms,
all of us brown & bare, without oranges,
or flags. I will be mistaken, I thought, for another
animal, one it is legal to kill. A bear or boar.
& none of my noises distinctly human.
Bear me. Bore me. My animal breaths
& words.
At the end of the road, someone’s mother
is playing at the accordion again.
A stack of cars, junked,
on the back of a truck.
Her third hand waves
to me, in the old Italian way of waving,
which looks like “goodbye” but also like “come.”
Of the eight directions, I cannot tell which
is safest. Only that, somehow, I would go on & on
if up to me. Then the ground on which to lay
my body down, following its flatness.

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When their hands are upon,
I know I am mere story, a hornless curiosity
bleeding out to space the space of me
that was secret even to me.
I say my words, but they,
to them, are nothingspeaking,
so stand, so stagger, stagger to show
the humanness of my plea,
but I am bucking in moonlight to the emptying clip.
Of my dance away from the gunning you would say
the same manies: Urgency. Athleticism. Grace:
the muscles, vexed, in strain & falling.
I turn my face & try to rid my head of knowledges.
Instead long for the shape of the cypress,
but a consequence is thinning me.
I am a farness now,
& the moon’s black marias.