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Wednesday, April 8, 2009

BOOK OF THE WEEK: HOW GOD ENDS US, by DéLana R. A. Dameron


I was introduced to DeLana Dameron's work three years ago when Lenard Moore included her in his gathering of the Carolina African American Writers Collective poets. Later, he sent me a small folder/chapbook of her "Poems for Palestine," which impressed me with its empathy and courage. I re-discovered DeLana on the redroom.com site, where she has a blog, and have been following her blogspot.com posts for several weeks now. Her new book of poetry, How God Ends Us, is just out from the University of South Carolina Press. She's been giving readings in North Carolina, where she went to school (UNC-CH), although she now resides in New York City. Maybe we can entice her into coming back south? I hope so.




PHOTO CREDIT (author photo)
Rachel Eliza Griffiths

COVER ART CREDIT
Alexandra Cespedes


How God Ends Us
DéLana R. A. Dameron
Foreword by Elizabeth Alexander
Poetic conversations with a God whose omnipotence brings both peace and uncertainty
University of South Carolina Press
www.sc.edu/uscpress
6 x 9, 96 pages
paper, $14.95t
ISBN 978-1-57003-832-7

DéLana R. A. Dameron holds a B.A. in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has a strong interest in the intersections of history and literature. Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South, PMS: PoemMemoirStory, 42opus, storySouth, Pembroke Magazine, and Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review. She has received fellowships from the Cave Canem Foundation and Soul Mountain and is a member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective.

All Hallows’ Eve


Bodies move suspecting nothing.
A child pours herself into her Halloween
costume—a dead virgin with blood-painted
face—and goes door-to-door knocking.
I never wanted to celebrate the dead

this way. Mama, in her South Carolina
room, hears the oxygen tube slip
from your nose and sees your eyes
turn from her. I call to see how you are doing.
Mama picks up and puts down the phone.
The children on our separate streets
must skip in their costumes, collect candy
in the name of the gory dead.

You are as I last saw you: in the chair,
oxygen expanding your chest. Your imagined
whisper to my mother, her hand with olive oil
to your forehead. A disconnected phone
in my hand. I’d think it tragic to call
home at the time of your death, except it’s not.
I’d think it bad luck you should die,
like my grandfather, in my mother’s arms.
Except, I know we cannot prepare for it.
We cannot count down to the moment
of our departure.

The children rap at my door
in death suits, skeletal costumes.
Spirits and demons walk out
into the night with its raucous possibilities.
I am inside. You are no longer inside,
but traveling: this flying I’m scared
to do, this dying I fear.

We move on this way,
propelling ourselves into our fears.
Frozen on my bed, I say Children
stop this death parade, Mama use your hands,
Daddy, answer the phone. But my gut says
you are gone. You are never
coming back. At midnight, the children stop
their rapturous inquiries. My father calls
in tears, crying this song I do not wish to know.


Lament

Oh, how You end us.
The beginning of disaster
is the moist inside of a lie. How You
speak with fiery tongue, with smoke words. How You
hide spirits in the spaces of the house no one inhabits.
There are other silences You keep.

There are other silences You keep
about the way You will end us
or send spirits in the spaces of the house no one inhabits.
The beginning of disaster. Your
fiery tongue speak. Words fly up in smoke,
curl inside out to reveal the moist parts of a lie.

Inside the tender part – the stomach of a lie –
are other kept silences. How you twirl
Your fiery tongue. Your words are smoke.
But, how You’ll end us,
summon spirits from inhabitable spaces
to whisper the beginnings of disaster.

Curled in the beginning of disaster,
deep inside the moist, tender parts are words
fired from Your tongue. All smoke.
Cull the spirits from the dark spaces of the house.
Cull them from the silences we keep.
God. The end of us.

You’ll soon end us.
It will be the beginning of a disaster.
Speak now with Your tongue of fire and smoke words.
Unearth the underbelly of all lies.
Inside the silences You keep
are spirits in the spaces of the house

where no one dwells, in the crevices
where You’ll surely end us –
here, in the silences of the house, the silences kept.
It will be the beginning and the end. Disaster
is the tender, moist center of every lie.
Still, Your tongue is fire. Our words, mere smoke.




Ad in the Chicago Defender
after Rose Piper’s “Slow Down Freight Train”


broad shouldered negro
seeks work up north.
robust hands good
for ferrying heavy loads
across long distances.
legs trained to walk
forty years in southern
wilderness. never worked
in the industry but willing
to learn. can keep long hours
slaving under intense sun.
no stranger to labor
or low wages however
there is word your low
is my promise. don’t need
much room. just a corner
of a corner to rest my eyes.
will not be distracted
by women or necessity
of the loins. will travel solo.
respond soon. will board
the next north-bound train.



Consider This
after Rose Piper’s “Slow Down Freight Train”

If windy nights in
that blustering city

are unbearable and you find
work is not worth walking solo;

if you need the surety
of relentless kudzu

spreading miles along
country highways

and my musk scent has
lifted from my lace

you took
because you need

to remember why you’re
there;

if the salt-cured ham glazed
with honey is no longer

my sweet sweat on your
tongue and your fingertips

forget journeys along my
forever hips;

if you can find someone
to stew you neck bones and

when after a search for every
remnant of flesh your lips

covet the straight lines
of my neck

then, come back.
Come back home.



Heartland of Columbia Nursing Home

After the operation, doctors said her heart was retiring,
would not send blood down the right leg.

There was no other option.

When we visited the nursing home,
I pushed the button to raise her head

toward the bent straw leaning over the cup’s lip.
She asked for other favors: one more pillow

to the pile, a louder radio to hear God’s word,
a yellow salty cornstarch snack in her mouth

to dissolve on her tongue, my fingernails
along her right calf.

I was confused. I moved to pat her left,
blanketed foot. I was seven and did not know the itch of absence.

© 2009 How God Ends Us, DéLana R.A. Dameron


The Last Touch

There is a dead mother
and a living daughter and the ritual
of washing hair. I was too young to think
anything heroic about her heavy head
in your hands before the funeral.
What an intimate farewell: you
waiting at the house of a friend,
the funeral home – agreeing to your request –
delivers great-grandma Georgia
so that yours could be the last touch.
How you moved your fingernails
between her wet follicles, shielded
her eyes, careful not to splash
shampoo because you remember
being chided about the burn. You denied
the embalmer’s offer to dress her;
denied her their orange lipstick, but
gave her the best dress and a heel –
having been a while since she could walk
after diabetes snatched half a leg.
This intimate farewell: you rubbing
her down in baby oil, whispering
Mama, singing her those thousand hymns
every ready in your mouth.




© 2009 How God Ends Us, DéLana R.A. Dameron

5 comments:

Brenda Kay Ledford said...

Kay,
Thanks for posting this poet's work. I always enjoy reading your blog and keeping up with the current writers.

Happy Easter!

Nancy Simpson said...

Thanks for this post. I'm happy to see this young poet getting a thorough celebration for her book of poems.

DeLana said...

Hi Kathryn,

They announced this at the Quail Ridge reading. Thanks again!

All best,
DeLana.

Kathryn Stripling Byer said...

DeLana, I hope the reading went well and that you enjoyed being back in NC again. K.

awcamp said...

Beautiful and powerful work! I'm loving this month of poetry!!
Ann