Judith Roney
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Could You Call It Exodus
—but man I tell you we sat in a dark house
the night before we left
no lights, no alert for authority. With blood on our doorpost
we ate roast meat, flatbread, and collards, slept
in our belted jeans, sandals fastened to our feet.
We were passed over in the night, a linear midnight motion
of divine disregard. And when the sun
still slumbered
here was a house
where there was no one found dead.
We were bound
for the interstate taking our herd, the dogs
and the cat, the silverware and socks
stuffed in the truck, one curse to the land—
we were gone.
O Lord you had us on the run
with nothing, no silver, no free pass
just what we brought out from slavery,
plunkered, driven hard in a desert.
But we were children, oh yes
I tell you we were babes on the road seeking salvation
from a dust-filled sojourn in un-promised land.
We moved from Hebron to Athens, to Sarasota
and Naples until we bled red in the wilderness
till we wearied of rest stops.
Led by high clouds and low country
we found bridges that spanned
waters besieged with red tide, lapped
edges seethed, white foamed, mouths
swallowing what we left behind
and when the cloud and the glory went higher
we pushed on,
we fled like high thieves
on the lam.
Refugee
A hard night
again. I shift in the bed
pulling limbs close and curl
my forearm under my cheek as legions
roil and shift along the path of my spine
to make camp at the stem of the brain.
Heavy footsteps and wagons with wheels
wobbling clatter between sternum and rib.
Inside the wagons are bones of the family: jaws
fixed rigid against me, knuckles gnarled form work
against my version of truth. This is the hour of night
that they visit—dead relatives sit
at the end of my bed like lumps hard to swallow—
they drag me across open deserts
and swamps, tangle my limbs in the mangrove—
prick me with poles of pine fixed with their prayer flags,
and pierce the underside of my skin.
I turn restless again
from frayed cloth imprinted with mother,
father, and doubt. They finger
snail shells, sprinkle salt at my feet
and poke at white birds in cages,
twigs twist into signs, and my grandmother’s mother
spits curses in German, shows me her blistered
palm purpled with blood. Bits
of marble and amber rattle my lungs
as ancestral hands prick my wrist
with Tyrian purple and orpiment.
I begin to dissolve from the stain
and the salt like a mollusk
shriveled—exposed and afraid—they migrate
through hollows, ride though capillaries
and veins to settle behind eyelids
where all the kin of my kin gather
and ask, my God, what have you done?
I brush off the pigment and dust
of their bones and am mute. The words
it’s all that you gave me hang like a flag
on the border of my hushed mouth. Out
in the backyard under
black sky and the stars,
there’s a balm in the velvet night
and scent of quiet star jasmine.
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Judith Roney has created and taught writing workshops for adults challenged by mental illness in conjunction with the University of Central Florida’s Literary Arts Partnership. Her fiction, essays, and poetry have appeared in numerous publications. Her poetry collection, “According to the Gospel of Haunted Women” received the 2015 Pioneer Prize, and a memoir piece, “My Nickname was Frankenstein,” is nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She confesses to an obsession with the archaic and misunderstood, dead relatives, and collects vintage religious artifacts and creepy dolls. Currently she teaches poetry at The University of Central Florida while pursuing a doctoral degree in Texts & Technologies.