Of Course there is No Indictment for Jason Stockley
but my great-grandmother is resting. she looks regal
in her Geri chair, her one leg left propped
like an antique. I don’t know when her mouth began to part
while sleeping, her remaining gold teeth
tarnished, divvied across gums like dominos. I have known
the eyes to have always rested ajar.
in the 90s, I slept parallel to her on a full size
mattress. we covered with 1 quilt and a thick comforter.
we talked nightly news and prepared for my wetting the bed,
an old-ragged towel playing the role of a dam.
I wore her t-shirts as nightgowns. always, in the late night,
was the scavenging and distributing of a soft, 1x collectible.
we’d talk until the Tonight Show with Jay Leno came on. mostly,
she fell asleep before me, her snoring light, graceful even.
in the morning, I’d wake to a bed emptied of her – hers
and her daughter’s voice loud with merriment,
then silence and the smell of uncooked greens, the cracking
of the stems picked apart, smoked ham hocks boiling,
bubbling with anticipation, the TV faint. and suddenly the women’s
voices came again. like good girlfriends, they laughed
a lengthy laugh, the kind of laugh that curled in the air making
others smile into laugh. laughter after gossip.
laughter after grieving. laughter only those who have lived
poor and black and woman deserve to laugh.
and the rustling of the trash bags as stem droppings fell
between knees was as sporadic as the silences.
for as long as I could, I managed to stay settled on the mattress,
wet or dry. it was in my settling that I learned
grown folks’ business. the slightest move could alter a chronicle.
if lucky, I learned of the south,
its blues, its formulas for good loving, of how great-grandmother
grew up the youngest of 8 on a Mississippi farm.
I learned of her migration, how it was both escape and chicanery,
how she migrated from one Jim Crow south
only to make it to what might as well had been another. if lucky,
I learned of the roots of her circumspection
with white folks, openness always accompanied with hesitation or
no openness at all. then there was the shit talking,
like how the white lady she pressed clothes for could kiss her
black ass first and ask questions later
and in the mix always an, “ooo girl, did you hear…”
these and other things were the makings
of a survival. and yes, she is even teaching me survival now. hoisted
into confusion, her whole being in the hands
of the Hoyer lift. the Hoyer lift in the hands of black women
who possibly live lives similar to the one she has.
with patience, they convey her slowly to the railed bed, lay her
softly on the mattress where she is always
managing stillness, wet or dry. and she settles, her stump
leaving space for me to sit centered.
on the TV screen, there is a man who has killed a man. and
through the pidgin we have created,
I attempt to tap into her demented universe. I turn to her.
I attempt to discuss the evening news.
El Williams III is a St. Louis native. His poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Public Pool, the Shade Journal, and RISE: An Anthology of Power and Unity (VAGABOND Press, 2017). He received his B.A. in English and Black Studies from the University of Missouri and is a recent participant in the Tin House Summer Workshop. Currently, he works in education. You can follow him on twitter and instagram @elda3rd.