Stick Elegy

Unfortunately, I haven't had much time to write recently. What I have written has been more and more difficult to complete, and I have had little time to do any free reading. What reading I have done has mostly been out of journals and magazines. I came across this poem a few weeks ago, and thought I'd share it. It is titled "Stick Elegy," and is by Terrance Hayes, a teacher and writer at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. The poem was recently published in the March 2008 edition of Poetry magazine.

STICK ELEGY

The dead were still singing "Turn the lights down low"
Beneath Yellow Bridge where years before, clowning
And ass out, Stick jumped with nothing but the State
Championship trophy in his righteous clutch. The water
Was supposed to be deepest there, and for three seasons
Straight MVPS: Charlie "Fly" Kennison, Long Timmy Long,
And Rocket Jefferson, those are the names I knew, jumped

Free. But Stick's ankle broke. I fished him out, crumpled
And bawling like the day he was born, like an object of
Baptism, and a life of bad luck followed in the shape of
Floods and fractured lightning, and then, numb, tooth-
Less, and changed, the dead refused burial, striking out, 2
By 2, 4 by 4, from the morgue house to raise trouble at
The bridge. I started hearing birds everywhere after that.