This week Kim Whysall-Hammond is the W3 Poet of the week. She has issued a poetry challenge that has made my mind spin! She asks us to write a poem about a specific person who had to leave home. We can tell a fairy tale, offer a confession, or recount an experience from someone we know, admire, or met in passing. The story can be uplifting, joyful, or funny. We are asked to tell why they left, what happened to them, and describe the journey – both physical and personal. We are supposed to write in a known form and explain the form and the reason you chose it. As the cherry on top the poem must contain the word “home”!
He had no name. Unclaimed and unnamed, he was sold. Anatomy cadavers were cheap to buy and saved the city the cost of burial. What was known was that he was an unknown victim. A bullet pierced his sternum, exploded his heart. Other bullets nicked ribs. They came from a “Tommy” gun. No one investigated. No one paid for the murder. No one took him home to his mother. His name was lost when his flesh was lost, and likely his soul.
Bright flashes and blood
The moon witness to violence
Raindrops like tears fall
From the morgue to the medical school. From the medical school to the rendering facility. Taken apart and put back together. Wires strung as joints, woven to hold ribs in place. Travel farther from a man, travel further from home, travel to the classroom. A journey stripping him of all dignity and identity.
His mother lost hope
Prayed, mourned, cried for a son lost
The moon never spoke
From classroom to classroom, school to school, his bones turned glossy. So many students, tracing muscle attachments. Counting bones in hands, feet, ribs. They examined scapulae. Rubbed patellae to make them shiny. Made him wear a fedora. Stuck a cigarette in his mouth. Too little care, too close to the radiator, too long in storage. He turned brittle.
Time waits for no man
Men come and go, some linger
Give light like dead stars
It fell from her hands. Became an explosion spraying shrapnel. Bone fragments are sharp. The dome had been smooth and white. Now it was nothing more than a pile of splinters and dust. Ashes to ashes. All that gray matter is now gray doesn’t matter. Except for the mess she had to sweep up. To me that matters. Splinters of dome. Fragments of bone. The mind gone soft as corn starch and as difficult to clean up. Dust to dust. Everything falls from our hands. Even memories.
The journey concludes
Dirt and dust return to earth
Last Rites – grant him peace
This is written as a Haibun. It seemed very appropriate as Haibun are a Japanese literary form combining a concise prose poem or narrative with one or more haiku. The topic is generally a description of a specific moment or a record of a journey.
When I was in High School there was a human skeleton in my advanced biology classroom. He was fragile. The teacher had rescued him from being thrown away. Most of the classrooms had new, plastic skeletons. But she liked this one. The hole in his sternum and the chunks from his ribs were made by bullets. The history was that he had been gunned down in Detroit during the early 1920s. He was unclaimed and ended up being a cadaver at a medical school. After that he was turned into an anatomy skeleton at the same medical school. Then he was sold to a small college then to a high school. He passed through several school districts before ending up at my school. He was missing teeth, several fingers and a couple toes. He was strung up on a metal frame (which had seen better days). The biology instructor was forced to take him down so she could replace the stand. He was laid out on a table. When she finally was ready to put him on his new stand, it took 5 of her students to lift him and hold him up to attach him. The hook attached to the wire from the top of his skull broke. His body dropped and his head detached. Our teacher gently lifted his head but the gentle pressure of her hands caused his skull to implode. It made a lasting impression on me.
