The Children by TJ Jarrett

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend July 7, 2015   The Children   TJ Jarrett

Sometimes I dream of a slave ship docking at port & my grandmother has brought me here. She takes my hand (in the dream I am very young) as we watch the children disembark. The children are lithe & descend one after another after another—squinting, lifting their hands to shield their eyes from the burning light of this new country. I ask her: But will they be loved? She rubs my head & says: The lack of it isn’t the worst thing to happen to them. Think of all the ways what is not love comes for us, sometimes parading itself as obligation, or the violence we bear & soon they won’t distinguish one from the other. The hurt itself will be a kind of attention. A boy hears us talking & stares right back at me. He is black, blacker than anyone I’d ever seen—iridescent, glowing with it. I’m so moved that I dart between the guards toward him & hold him in my arms & where I touch him, feathers grow. The boy sprouts wings & lifts from the earth. We are transfixed—me & grandmamma & children & the guards— gazing upward. At first, he careens away, then back toward us only to ascend, blacking out the sun until he climbs high enough that he is swallowed by it altogether.            Copyright © 2015 by TJ Jarrett. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “I’ve always had vivid dreams. This one came to me with such force that I woke confused, and I had to get up and go to my office. I’ve been writing these poems as a way to develop a dream diary to understand the recurrence of certain symbols that I encounter night after night.” —TJ Jarrett   TJ Jarrett is the author of Zion (Southern Illinois University Press, 2014). She is a senior integration engineer at HealthTrust in Nashville, Tennessee.   Photo credit: Dennis Wile Poetry by Jarrett   Zion (Southern Illinois University Press, 2014) "Poof!" by Mark Irwin "After David Hammons" by Claudia Rankine "Black Laws" by Roger Reeves Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038