Pink Chenille – Vandal Poem of the Day

She of Ecclesiastes & cream-colored envelope,

the mother mails

to summer cousin—

cash, food stamps, regards:

Dear Shirley,

Your bosom is

a great big city, pink chenille

for other folks’ children. Six weeks of pillowed

nights to dream of freeways, malts & shortstop,

my son jumped off the sighing Greyhound belching Sunkist,

Patrina & Pea-Eye, his new bus-seat friends—

belief & noise stuck to his chest, yelling he’d thumbed

way back to basement-paneled Sixteenth Street Baptist:

Cynthia, Carol & Carole & Addie Mae—back to 15 September 1963

Child, came home chirping Five Points South,

UAB, Thirteenth Avenue North, Dynamite Hill,

Legion Field & Dr. A.G. Gaston:

Part of all you earn is yours to keep.

The truth is red:

Next to them that’s got shall get, I twitch.

You wear raven silk taut at the nape of the neck.

In wards of Pac-Man, Adidas, & Atari,

you ushered in this rattle of awe—

glorious Black Fever!

Glorious—

Yours,