The Good Die Young and Supine
Marvin is ... the only man I have ever seen lay down and sing.
—Leon Ware
Some mid days, blank moments in loud
gatherings when I fall from the conversations’
sweetening threads, gaze anchored in the beyond,
I wonder if I have spent the bulk of three decades
living where one man did not die. Places the voice
of my father echoes without the pitch of keening
his last illness wrung from him, where his flesh
did not, by degrees, make space for air, his wrist
a fraction of the circumference of his daughter’s,
where I might still receive a feather light blue
Airmail letter covered with his living scrawl,
the tongue tucked into two soft folds, sealed
with his DNA: that unwavering eye, that satirical
pause, that turn of phrase that leans to song,
that laugh that set every joyous gathering alight,
head thrown back, a glimpse of eternal stars.
Notes:
This poem is part of the folio “Freed Verse: A Reckoning of Black British Poets.” Read the rest of the folio in the September 2025 issue.
Source: Poetry (September 2025)