African Voices Summer 2016 (Digital) | Page 19

My Father Tells Me
He and My Mother
Got Married the Year
Purple Rain was Released
And that was the year I learned how much a piano
make me look like my mother
or my father it depends on the hour
there we were caught in the middle of a morning
in America that promised only that the fire
was remembering its name
and we didn’t have very much back then
but the promise of a marriage
of smoldering flags
I never liked it here birthright or not
I’ve always been a captive of my own blood
I stayed because nobody else wanted your grandmother
that and the promise of some electric grief
I heard Prince for the first time
on a pirate radio station
like every other beautiful thing I know
I had to steal the air that surrounded it
he played all his own instruments
wrote all his own lyrics
and I never found another Black boy
with that many hands
he must be some kind of holy
for me to turn the volume high enough
to make it look like your grandfather’s
ghost hadn’t been visiting for a week straight
the sound pierced the smoke
and I had hands again

Your mother saw the movie with me once
I must have seen it eleven more times
and I ain’t prayed for rain that hard
since your grandfather passed
and I spent years trying to exhale his ghost
Let me tell you something about grief
it’s only Black insofar as it’s a mirror
I look into the sky all the time
and see his favorite song
you and I are alike that way
that’s partially my fault
I was the one who played his songs
onto your womb
I just wanted you to know
there was music amidst the drowning
Now he’s gone
and you know what he meant
when he say that doves cry
sometimes it hurts to remember
how to go home
I don’t wish for the sky anymore
just a chance to know you’re safe
and to say hello to my dad one last time
and to say a goodbye to you
while I still know my name
I never wanted to be a burden
but when I am fading
If no fire is available
drape me in purple
dress me like something
that might never set
© 2016 Julian Randall

african Voices

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