Alexandria Ashford is the editor of Expressionists Magazine of the Arts at Pepperdine University. She was born in Starkville, Mississippi, and her writing is heavily influenced by her experience in the South.

Alexandria Ashford

Elegy in Broken Stanzas

                      for Corey

A.R. Leak and Sons Funeral Home

when the sun went down, Momma

Liz wore her biggest blackest hat

rolled her chubby yellow hand across

your face over and over again, groaning

something none of us could decode:

December cake:  white phosphorus:  casket talk.

                     I may only ever hint at those vast brown eyes flecked

                     with mulatto green and Chicago sun by lighting

                     candles as is custom, humming that song

           you sang in church.  I'll write as long as I can

                     of the broken slant in your nose; your love for sweet-dirt,

                     as if to give you back to yourself.  If I could give

           you anything back, it would be summer 1995.

                    You were eight then.  The age of tonka

trucks and bare feet, black bayou and luck in four leaf clovers.

When the sun was highest and hottest in the sky, I told you

stories under the grandfather tree, kept you safe from bumble-

bees and sunburn.  Held your hand when we crossed the street in search

of honeysuckle.  Admonished you as a "big boy."  We couldn't have known

that death was so possible.  Like scraped knees.  Shoe polish.

A polecat.  How ignorant I was,

Still am:                                                                  Language fails me,

            But I wanted to

write this for you.  I wanted

to cry a while and write this

for you.  To once more

hold your hand as you cross

the road--older--this time into something

wider; something tall as the way

Mahalia sang.  And even here, I fall short.

         I cannot cross with you.  Help you dodge the snapperfish,

                   choose the shallowest pond.  Instead, I choose a soft clean

         voice in which to pray, listen to my love, thick with fragrance

         cross the void.  Every day, your face is my votive:  that grin

         --open shimmer--that oh-so-fly black Chicago boy bad

         with the basketball.  Darling you.  September evenings, I wait

         for you at the storm cellar 'til the hollyhock burn my nose.

         I can still see those great big eyes sparkle, your scraped knees

            matted with fescew, boy blood clean and blue as India ink.

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