Subhaga Crystal Bacon
Praise Song
In the dark times, will there also be singing?
Yes, there will be singing.
About the dark times.
—Bertolt Brecht
I want to sing about these dark times, call them fulsome—
dark being all colors—the wood of the ebony tree,
piano keys, children’s eyes. I want to sing a borrowed
Praise Song for those who sang the Middle Passage
who sang in Hush Harbors, who sang in message.
My arms ropy and long want to
lift the shades on shuttered hearts.
Oh, great loss. Oh, deep fear; let your waters flow.
I want to hold your beating, your beaten
hearts, your grieving and wronged hearts.
Come on down, let’s go down, down to the river to pray.
Let’s wash ourselves: no more of the good old way.
I want to sing with the river the way
rocks make sound from motion.
I want blood to run freely, new blood from old,
dark and rich with ancestors, world’s
first people, the minerals, the star-gold
and soil; the clear, the raging, salt or sweet waters
before they rose up in wood and canvas and bullets
before they carried those lives away
to all the ways of dying.
I want to sing about these dark times, call it fulsome—
my song, a kind of crying—
I want to weave a kind of Praise Song:
Oh, my kindred, oh, my brethren, all the old ways
to say beloved, family, familiar. I want to appease
the killed and the killer. I want to redeem
the bent knee, release the choke hold.
—Submitted on 01/01/2021
Subhaga Crystal Bacon is the author Blue Hunger (Methow Press, 2020) and Elegy with a Glass of Whisky (BOA Editions, 2004). Her poems have appeared in Bombay Review, River Heron Review, Lavender Review, Humana Obscura, Plum Recruit, and other journals, A cis-gender, queer-identified woman, Bacon lives in Twisp, Wash.
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