New Poetry

Brown Girls

They stand on the corner

Up the block

Brown girls with heads tossed back

Laughing too loudly

And smacking gum,

Weaves tossing

Painted fingers snapping

Breasts popping

Out of tops too tight

Brown girls with no place to go.

They call out to the boys

Across the way

Brown boys with heads tossed back

Cussing too much

And drinking beer

Pants sagging

Glowing ashes flicking

Hands gripping

The bulge of a crotch

Brown boys with no place to go.

• Lemelia Bonner

wreck

an explosion, and teen boys

blow through a stop sign

on a darkened street

hit a family man and wife

on their way to wherever and

not on guard

they pass this way every day

but now it's night

and the time is right

for boys to get rowdy

and drive fast

going wherever they're going

going anywhere

they don't care

in a second lives change

a tree there a wall here

and someone screams

as another tosses beer

into a nearby yard

two try to run

but limbs are failing

gas is spraying?

or maybe it's just water

from a hydrant that was hit.

now neighbors are running

from everywhere

people are coming

to see who's hurt who's alive

did anyone survive?

one woman keeps saying

she saw the whole thing

then from a jeep

a call for help

trapped tight beneath metal

now sirens are blaring

and dozens are staring

but only one moves and dares

to pull the woman halfway out

somehow everyone is breathing

heavy, but hearts still beating

and the night begins to settle

back into a cautious calm.

- Lemelia Bonner

The Wait

She sits in a failing chair by the window

and peers through a crack at the edge of the blinds.

There's only a slip of life going by,

but walkers so close she can hear conversations

on phones, to themselves, or a friend across the way.

Cars roll so near that every hiss, horn, and howl

comes right through the cardboard taped in place

on a house that's falling down all around her every day,

But she can't do any better, and can't move much at all.

Maybe she'll just sit here til she passes away

from lack of reason or lack of care.

And then someone will lay her out in a cheap, white coffin;

finally let her become again the dust from which she came.

Sometimes a friend or a son may think to stop by

to see if she's in place, or has an easy need to fill.

But not today, no, today no one comes,

and she's just an old, old woman

with nothing more to offer the world.

• Lemelia Bonner