written by Louis E. Bourgeois
In a room of textured sheet-rocked walls
He had screamed at her from the threshold.
The white live-in
He with his Cherokee skin.
With his coffee skin, faded skin,
He escaped from the reservation
And became a barred attorney in Georgia.
He being only twenty-one
It was all his own making
There was no blood bonus
Only years of hard work and starving with strength.
Propped on pillows and hands behind the neck
Elbows on both sides the head
Lying alone on a queen size bed
Staring at a busted wall.
The jagged orifice of the wall
Dangled a piece of itself, in itself,
Where the door knob had just gone into and out of.
Stretching out the hand that forced the door
Into a mean breath, echoing through the Atlanta town house,
Remembering it as the same hand that made his grandfather
Say slapping: uyoiu way, uyoiu way:
When throwing stones through people’s windows
When caught stealing loose-leaf from the Cherokee store
When caught slicing the throat of a neighbor’s dog
With a knife as long as a stake and a few inches more.
Then the central air conditioner hit 72 degrees
Pushing the dangling wall back and forth
The air roaming his body
Like wind on an apricot colored desert. 