Ask What I’ve Been
–Jamaal MayI think cast stiff
around ankle, plaster pouredinto a chest-shaped mold.
I think wet cement.I say stone, and you think pebble
in stream or marblefountain or kimberlite.
I say gravel or graveor ask me later. There are days
I mourn being builtfrom this. Made
of so much aggregateand gravestone, so little
diamond and fountain water.When I was a construction
crane, my balled fiststoppled buildings of boys.
I rifled through the pocketsof their ruins.
Ask what I’ve been. Detroitis a stretch of highway littered
with windshield,a boy picking the remains
of a window from his hair.I say Detroit;
you think glass.I say glass; you think atrium;
I say atrium beamswarped by heat;
think cathedral. My shoe solessay stain. Glass between treads,
treads imprinted on gum.Everything finds its bottom,
say the sewers.Don’t come any closer,
begs a map of collapsed veins,while the burnt-out colonial,
this empty lot,and this alley-dark cavity
all say the shelter is sparse, yes,but there is space here for bones—
a ribcage, brimming like yours.
Photo by Meta Zahren on Unsplash