LUTHER HUGHES

Are you are you
Coming to the tree
Where the dead man called out
For his love to flee
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met at midnight
In the hanging tree

-James Newton Howard, The Hanging Tree

A Shiver in the Leaves

A swallow of flies showering
                                             his open mouth
where the blood crusts.

Dead, he won’t speak, I know.
               I can see how pain once chewed the neck
                              blacker than most.

I rest my head against the tree, sleep
                                               and wake in his call.

Like legs of a spider, his nature extends past his body,

                                                                                             saying,

                                                                                                           Like you I once harbored beauty

                                                                                             saying,

                                                                                                           Like you my beauty takes the kingdom of blackness.

It is dawn somewhere in the man’s eyes,
                                              a cavern: a slow thaw to memory.

I look
and look
and look.

                                                            Who is to say what death is or not?

He has his limbs, a sky overlooking.

                                                                          I know he is dead, nothing will change

but still I whisper in his ear,

               Breathe. I want you to breathe.

(with lines from “The Yoke” by Frank Bidart)

Prayer

After many years away, Seattle is everywhere: the fresh faces
            of the perennials, the crows that kiss the blue sky.

I was once the blue sky. I ran over the hills of my body
            with the son of a man who killed himself.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about what suicide means.
My friend says there are many ways to commit suicide
            without actually dying. There’s joy in that.

I ask myself: Do you really want to die this far away from your hometown?
I don’t. Want to die, I mean. It’s too beautiful this summer
            and I want to see another like it. The bluebells. The cardinals.

This morning, my mother called again to say she loves me.
I was annoyed, I admit it. I think she is dying
            but doesn’t want to tell me. The last time I saw her
she was limping. She didn’t think I’d seen. Her face was sinking
into her skull. She was still beautiful. Alive, purposefully blush.

When she hung up, I opened my blinds. I want to die
            with the city pouring onto my deathbed, to the floor,
then out into the hallway, and into another room where it can lay
its head on the pillows of others. Unbound by my bullshit.

Have you ever seen more than one cardinal at once? I’ve Googled it:
            are cardinals lonely birds?

I know what you’re thinking. Yes, I miss Seattle.
I miss my mother. I miss my father. I never call.

Last night, I dreamt my father and I stayed up all night
            watching his grandson do backbends, cry, and laugh—
his long black hair swooped into a bun. My father is alive.
Did you know? Sometimes I talk about him as if he’s dead.

When the man killed himself, what was he thinking?

When the people jumped out of the World Trade Center, red
            from the combustion; cardinals; lonely wings—

never mind. I don’t want to go there. I am always trying
            to escape too many places at once, flying
out of a cage and into another.

Passed Down

after Natasha Trethewey

You see him, dead now, you said.
Her and her, dead, too. Your face
so unchanged in the year of rain.
It wasn’t the year I loved a man

with a head bald like yours, but after.
Summer, I worked by Puget Sound
and you were happy I was home. The city
always told me best: Your grandfather is dead.

Since you have the same name, it’s safe
to assume part of you is dead too.
The living room never settled so kindly.
On the walls, pictures of your new children

who later that year refused to buy your pills.
You cried on the phone to me, said sorry.
The year of crying. The year of cracking
into men and the men ridding themselves.

I have the same name too. The year
of collective dying. What I thought was mine
belonged to you first. To think otherwise
was foolish of me. When your father died

the crows sorrowed the sky and the field lost
its green heart. It was out of the blue,
you showing me the old photo, digging it out
from a box beneath the TV. You look like him,

a man told me, meaning my grandfather,
meaning already dead, a sapped star.
He clothed my carefully like a tradition,
like a bitter chain passed down through generations.

Forgive me for the meaning I make of this.
You gave me a chain with your father’s gold ring.
It broke. I never told you. Forgive me
for being careless with your mourning.

Forgive my bones, my healthy little animals,
for bringing his face into your house. I’m glad
my dad got us out of Mississippi, you said, voice
sprouting for the first time after months of surgeries.

I sat, picture in hand, eyeing all the dead smiles
the ground has grown tired of. The year of extreme
heat, you said. You opened the backdoor
and the city, being merciful, gifted a breeze.

Luther Hughes is a Seattle native and author of Touched (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2018). He is the Founder/Editor-in-Chief of the Shade Journal and Associate Poetry Editor for The Offing. A Cave Canem fellow and Windy City Times Chicago: 30 Under 30 Honoree, his work has been published or is forthcoming in New England Review, BOAAT, TriQuarterly, The Adroit Journal, Bat City Review, and others. Luther received his MFA from Washington University in St. Louis. You can follow him on Twitter @lutherxhughes. He thinks you are beautiful.