Kitchens

You’d think it was a fucking cabaret in here,

All brass and smoke and cheap gin, cheaper beer,

A saxophone moaning like a prude thinks a whore does;

There’s only the domestic bustle of taking the garbage out,

Because the plastic coffin for chicken wings stinks

After an hour, because the open windows suck the doors

Closed with a slam as if we are arguing and you’re losing,

The toilet runs and that isn’t the worst; the worst is silence

When you need noise, need voices, need Errol Garner grunting

At the piano, his heavy hand on the bass. I didn’t start any chants

At the protest but I tried to carry them and my children heard me.

My son said, You have a voice that’s higher, that you can’t help

Hearing. I’d rather sing, like my grandmother did, a song in my key.

What I want doesn’t matter as much as the music of the names

Of the dead, of growing hoarse in the performance of my duty.

I come from a people of cantors, of someone telling Miriam

To shut the fuck up. Like that would ever, ever convince her.

If you are nodding now, instead of smiling, you know,

You know what I mean. Alone, we will be gentle, not like doves,

But like crows, who talk to each other through the green grass.

I want to listen to you through this dark green night.