Raye Hendrix, “Queen Susan #5”
step 1
under a cold cherry moon i pour myself
parallel. shrugged out of enough beds, content
with near any floor. i kick my legs free, cover
my head like weather, like carpet burn.
remember the hotel room, a joke of
paradise. the mess of glasses, shot nerves, our
shirts slick with what a body refuses licking my
heels. morning found me, a hard break, all but
breathing. the birds were so silent they
disappeared. remember drowning took more
than any dick could.
step 2
i must have walked straight past the place a
hundred times—a house hidden behind years
of green growth turned brown. always under
rain clouds bigger than God. downstairs, a
sanctuary pressed between bricks bathed in
pale blue light. i swam in its shadows, played
marriage with the wall, as close as i could get to
spilled warmth without touching. my hands,
caned, wouldn’t grip together when i tried to
sing. keep God by the bed. i held odds like chips
off the shoulder, rolled down my sleeves,
played the shots long or dead.
step 3
luck, like guilt, don’t fall to one side. it’s that
night in Brixton, rewriting history to game my
own memory. it’s angling my face through the
lighting at gigs to hide tears i’d sworn had worn
down to scars. i’ve earned this role. i’m a
bloody cheat—always riding ships too far past
the sunset, ignoring the birds who try to keep
me on track when the rocks are singing my
name. who was playing lookout in the light -
house, shining blue into midnight? my friends
who aren’t dying are already dead. now i lay
myself down for a new Man who parts the
clouds with His hands & makes ships from
refuse, & i’m just one more animal safe from the
flood.
All language sourced from the lyrics of Amy Winehouse’s two studio albums, Frank and Back to Black.
Anthony Thomas Lombardi is a Best of the Net- and Pushcart-nominated poet, editor, organizer, and educator. He is the founder and director of Word is Bond, a community-centered reading series partnered with the Asian American Writers’ Workshop that raises funds for transnational relief efforts, bail funds, and mutual aid organizations, and currently serves as a poetry editor for Sundog Lit. He has taught at Borough of Manhattan Community College, Paris College of Art, Brooklyn Poets, Polyphony Lit’s Summer Editorial Apprenticeship Program, and community programming throughout New York City. A recipient of the Poetry Project Emerge-Surface-Be Fellowship, his work has appeared or will soon in the Poetry Foundation’s Ours Poetica, Guernica, Black Warrior Review, Gulf Coast, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Massachusetts Review, North American Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and their two cats.