Poetry: Two Poems by Daniel B. Summerhill
bop: Jimmy interviews Malcolm posthumously
i’m too optimistic to believe in paradise
as a members only club, but there’s a cloud
of witness that hasn't left harlem since ‘65.
an ocean away in the melancholia of london,
i stood amongst pillage and all its heirs, tell me:
when you wished peace unto your assassina—
i used to be afraid of god, then iblīs, now nothing
—agreed, everybody wants to be god and he wants
to be us. what's he like? has he shown you to Betty’s
block? i hope it's lined with fire lilies as gold
as Lumumba’s tooth. legend is, they love him
as much as they love you on this rock. it's winter
again and the rain hasn't come enough. tell me:
is it the storm or the gravity pulling the sky down
you fear most? what came first, Mecca or Muhammad?
i used to be afraid of god, then iblīs, now nothing
isn't there always a fall? isn't there always a nearer
devil in our grasp? i’m still here amongst the pillage.
it outlives us as peril outlives prayer. a deity is a ritual
we do not miss. brother— when they took you,
all they left was your perfect tongue. brother,
where is your aging heart? who do you claim to be?
i used to be afraid ofgod, then iblis, now nothing
all my prayers sound like a Chief Keef record
(after Hanif Abdurraqib)
near 152, the reservoir has no water.
well, amen.
where i'm from a group of Black folks is a two-step or a funeral. a circadian rhythm; a small
slaughter.
43 miles to 152, a balloon in the draft says it must return home before the streetlights come on.
a boy tells me he believes in god because his mother didn’t die when she was choked to death.
*
while peeling a pomegranate, my uncle’s words: nothing good comes without hard work. i can't
recall if this was before or after his body burst into a field of hydrangeas.
my mother coaxing my tears into a small offering, the soil shimmers. a mausoleum of new.
i don’t know death, only grief.
*
if i don't sleep, tomorrow will come anyway. i apologize,
i'm not in the business of disproving miracles.
if we’re protesting death, it's too late.
if we're looking for god, it's too soon.
i apologize, heaven has all my favorite people &
the dead don't desire justice, only ghosts.
*
and when they leave, even their shadows gota sound to ‘em.
*
praise Frank Ocean’s falsetto. moon river’s second chorus dangling from the chord progression
like a tiny poltergeist. praise the ghosts that keep me suspended between here and somewhere
holier. praise the pallbearers. how the dead are responsible for preserving the dead. praise
Jimmy’s cigarette tapping like morse code. praise no name in the street and all of its cousins.
praise the scaffold. praise the hand.
*
off highway 1, there is a place where calla lilies run away into the ocean.
the waves freestyle their orison. in this story, the boy is a blade.
i apologize. all my prayers sound like a Chief Keef record.
*
some i love are dead
some i love eulogize themselves by dancing to their childhood names—
*
;;;;;;;
will you hold my hand while the water rises?
will you fall to your knees for prayer?
“all my prayers sound like a chief keef record” is after Hanif Abdurraqib’s “Some I Love Who Are Dead” and includes lines from Bustah Rhymes and Tierra Whack.
About Daniel B. Summerhill
Daniel B. Summerhill is a poet and essayist who has earned fellowships from Baldwin for the Arts and The Watering Hole. He is the inaugural Poet Laureate of Monterey County and has published two collections of poems, Divine, Divine, Divine and Mausoleum of Flowers. His poems and essays appear in The Academy of American Poets, The Indiana Review, Columbia, Callaloo, Obsidian, Inkwell and elsewhere. He is the winner of the 2023 1/k prize from The Indiana Review. An Oakland native, Daniel lives in the Bay Area and is Assistant Professor of Poetry at Santa Clara University.
