BEFORE ORPHAN UNEARTHED THE MIRROR

He was

always told that he looked like everyone, everything—

his mama’s brother and sister, that loopy

cockeyed chicken, that droop-tittied store girl.

Nosy folks even said he resembled Earl Lee’s

circling mule, or that crumpled picture of Jesus

stapled to the kitchen. When you are not in

the way that he was not, no one admits a root.

Everyone had a hand or paw on him, steady

testifying to the miracle of his standing,

his dogged insistence upon breath. So one

morning he just up and said good-bye.

He swept his eyes slow over the spider

cracks swallowing the crop, the toppled milk

cans and slivered barn roof, his uncle’s flat

face, the pummeled tops of his own shoes.

He said good-bye to a shred of his father

folded into the trilling heart of a tree. I’m

leaving for Chicago he told his aunt and uncle

and they didn’t even try hiding their hallelujah.

All his nose, hands, and stride ever did were

remind them of dead. They hated telling him

how he looked like anything else, everything

else. They were tired of pretending that his face,

scratched and black, wasn’t a record that just

kept on skipping, playing that, that song.