Song for Blood Vibrato
When the twilight is gone,
and no songbirds are singing
When the twilight is gone
you come into my heart
-The Platters*
My prayer is for you
brass bird blowing
puncturing tipsy nights
summoning spirits
buzzing melodies
across armed skies
Mississippi, 1964. Andrew Goodman,
James Earl Chaney, Michael Henry Schwerner,
registering Black voters in the summertime.
All three of tender age. Chaney left a newborn at home.
Trying to preach the power of the individual note
blossoming into rhapsody. To make the marks needed
to enter the booth, into the church of choosing
where no songbirds are singing
Not my vote, not my country.
My desires fly upward into constellation’s cinemas,
sun’s promenades. I am a citizen of the sky
when the twilight when the twilight
is gone . . .
a giant earth-mover bites and dumps the blood-rich
soil deep down in Burrage’s Old Jolly Farm.
Mangling the earth, about to explode.
my prayer is to linger with you
Six weeks later they are found bulldozed
into the farm’s red clay.
Red clay in Andrew Goodman’s fists and lungs—
buried alive.
My prayer is for vibrato
voices undulating
smearing between notes
bridging differences
hanging together in your horn
in the bloods of voting
incandescence of scented
white magnolia nights
blowing free
gone
twilight
bird
My prayer is for you
to raise your horn again
to do brilliant runs
across the sky
defy the gods
fire to the limits
of longing and ask
to trill back the lives
always
there
always
there
*https://youtu.be/DE0UMnrQBD0?si=cMh9vkNTGz8SbIpD
Author’s Note: ^Inspiration from Claudia Rankine in ‘Citizen, An American Lyric’ (a book
length poem, 2014). ^^The Platters version of ‘My Prayer” was released in 1956. ^^^
’My Prayer’ is written by: Carlos Gomez Barrera, Georges Boulanger, James Kennedy.
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, RESERVOIR MEDIA MANAGEMENT INC.
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind.
About the Author: Anita Lerek is an age activist and poet. Some sample publication credits include The Orchards Poetry Journal (Kelsay Books), Jerry Jazz Musician, Silver Birch Press, The New Verse News, Beltway Poetry, One Art Journal of Poetry, and Cultural Daily. She was nominated for Best of the Net, 2022, and is author of chapbook, Of History and Being (2019). Her passion for jazz has led to her current writing focus, Jazzy Prosthesis, as in attempting to create an aesthetic replacement for what is gone. She resides in Toronto, Canada. Visit Anita on Facebook here.
As It Ought To Be 