for Lightnin’ Hopkins
You know what they say about lightning.
The grit & chomp & heat of this place
smears itself into your skin,
this born-again battlefield
where sweat smells of sky
& freedom & saltwater –
it never was anyone’s home but yours
& you never know who’s listening,
whose flesh will quicken at your touch
or what they will steal from you,
influence inseparable
from unrequited desire.
That blood-red river
pours & purrs without direction –
far-off howl almost lost in nightwind: soul
seeking forgiveness:
listen to that beat go on
as if any of us were anything more
than face in crowd
as if anyone’s gift
had been earned, as if we weren’t all
just somebody done wrong –
O the violence
we visit in the name of love
or art – the way no two people
hear the same sound,
the way a chord vibrates
one heart
but not another. Listen.
This city has the hum
& hustle of harmonica,
fine wail of guitar,
the roughhouse of dancehalls,
the jumped-up
jitterbug & bleeding fingers
of an honest day’s work
& a million dishonest nights.
This city where the devil’s never
spent the night, built by two brothers,
named for a general,
ineffective bulwark
against bruise of loneliness.
We’re all doing time
for someone else.
Amorak Huey, a former newspaper reporter and editor, teaches writing at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. His poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Oxford American, Rattle, PANK, Contrary, and elsewhere. More information can be found at www.amorakhuey.net.
