FOURTH ESTRANGEMENT, WITH A PETITION FOR THE REUNION OF JONATHAN & GEORGE JACKSON

—passing the island of San Michele, Venice

Though we rushed, in our way, through

the tangle of streets,

the green world & the red world,

& though, from the docks,

there stood San Michele not so far off,

we were late, it was not our time.

We boarded anyway, knowing

the boat would take us

only to Murano & then back,

to Cannaregio, again, 10 minutes

each way, if that, but we wanted

to pass, to see

the walls’ precision,

the beauty of brick aged & worn

by water, by air,

an island of coffins risen, & rectangles risen

from the sea, improbably,

& all I could think was the word “Brodsky”

who visited Venice 17 Decembers, who said

“Leaving all of the world, all its blue…,”

who was buried there

among the officers & the cypress trees,

the island’s histories of

the quiet of monks

& the prisoners’ pens, then

the gondolas laden with flowers, then

the coming of dusk,

then the lights & fog,

the new century’s traffic

of boats & the apple eye of the moon

nearly full as we passed San Michele

thinking, We cannot stop there now

but will touch the other shore,

desolate with its stacked chairs

& signs for no one at this hour, we will

touch & then turn back

toward Cannaregio,

home of history’s first ghetto,

a Jewish ghetto,

& the one wooden ladder we saw on our return,

which makes me think, only now, of Jacob

& his dream, this ladder which did, that evening,

seem to aim toward a height that was not heaven

but suggested heaven, propped as it was

against the high wall, the darkness

absorbing its final gesture. If we

had believed, we would have looked

for the dark faces of angels, climbing the ladder

& falling, carrying with them the messages

of exile, but, instead, there was just

the beauty of

the ladder against a wall, which is

a different beauty than the beauty of

a ladder on its side, or in a tree,

for our parents had been

locked out before.

In Cannaregio,

the gates & guards,

the three brothers

locked in stone,

& the Jews inside the ghetto walls

repeating their sentences of worth

to themselves, to god, under

their breaths, over their meals,

into their clothes as they mended

& endured the uncertain hours

behind the gate where, year after year at Passover,

the din of families & light,

lamentations, the story

of slavery in Egypt, the plagues,

first of blood, then frogs, until

the tenth plague, the angel

of death killing the firstborn

of each human, of even the

donkey, of even the cattle,

passing over only the doors marked

with the secret blood of lambs,

the doors of the chosen

until the Pharaoh’s final relent

& the Exodus of the Israelites,

forging the covenant of the Jews

with God. That was faith & metaphor.

The Book of Exodus.

Yet it would come to serve them through

the other sentences, & years. Look at what a story can do.

Astonishing what a story can do.

Who would we who were enslaved be now

had that been the story we told

ourselves of ourselves? A chosenness by God.

No afterlife. No poverty now & gold in heaven. No balm.

What changes? Does not change?

What if the enslavement & The Severances

were seen as persecution of our own black godliness?

Our holiness or specialness? Except, instead, I believe

the terror & the beauty that the water teaches:

no one is special, no one is special,

so let us keep learning as our mothers do,

loving women, loving men,

washing the feet of the beloved

at birth, at death, saying hello,

& cultivating questions

beside our joy.

I am caring now about Jonathan,

not David’s, son of Jacob,

Jonathan,

but son of Lester & Georgia,

youngest Brother of George. Jonathan who saw his George

stolen, who saw his genius locked away,¹

Jonathan Jackson who was seventeen &,

for a moment, free,² who tried to make

his body a Ladder Out

of loyalty, out of love.

Who is now not

dreaming under stars, but gone

from all his life & all his beauty,

& George, killed in bright sun

by the prison guard’s morbid aim,

George who wrote his letters

with his back to the wall,

in ugly & artificial light,

full of sorrow & of rage

& always only ever full of love

in San Quentin, circled

by the San Francisco Bay, & not far,

beneath time, then, now,

the Pacific turning & turning

its infinitely black pages, black

with the names,

& though it truly wounds us to believe

in death, gone Jonathan, gone

George, the countless falling out of

memory’s frame into the sea’s roiling behavior,

I know that death is also real

& with my bit of life petition

for the reunion of Jonathan & George,

& while I’m at it, Virgil Lamar & James Jr. Ware,

because there are stars, but none of you, to spare,³

& Margaret Garner & her child, & Abraham

& Sahalu, & they to the grass & a view of the moon,

the baobab & the oak & the acacia,

& they to the taste of clean water from

the river & dirt the color of their mothers’ hands

to eat from. Time fools me into thinking

they have not lasted, but let me tie

the breath that I borrow to

the breath that you borrow, let

them meet through the green

that is you & that is me,

& knowing what we know now

of history & of love,

let us name every air between strangers “Reunion.”

¹ from “George Moses Horton, Myself” by George Moses Horton

² from Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

³ from “Sunflower Sonnet Number Two” by June Jordan