Charles Coe
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Charles Coe is the winner of an Artist Fellowship in Poetry from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and now coordinates the Council's literature and music grant programs. His work has appeared in numerous literary reviews and magazines. A volume of his poetry, Picnic on the Moon, has been published by Leapfrog Press. Charles also appears on two spoken-word CDs: Get Ready for Boston, a collection of stories and songs about Boston neighborhoods, and on One Side of the River, an anthology of Cambridge and Somerville poets. His poems have been set to music by composers Julia Carey, Beth Denisch and Robert Moran. In addition to poetry, Charles writes feature articles and book reviews that have appeared in publications such as Harvard Magazine, The Boston Phoenix, and The Boston Globe. Charles is also co-chair of the Boston Chapter of the National Writers Union--a labor union for freelance writers.
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Riverside Park
Years ago, on the North side of Indianapolis
was an amusement park where "colored" people
couldn't go. There were no whites only signs;
it was simply understood that the city's Negro citizens
would teach their children how to live inside the dotted lines.
But one Saturday morning, in a act of teen rebellion
my mother and her girlfriends
decided it wasn't fair that only white kids
could ride a merry-go round.
So without telling their parents
they got on the north side bus to Riverside Park
But when they got the bus
and walked up the driveway to the gate
the white guard stared in astonished rage--
shouted, "Where you niggers think you goin'?
You know you cain't come in here! Go on. Git!"
And then, as if these words were not enough
he bent over to scrape up handfuls
of gravel and fling them at the girls,
like a farmer shooing crows from a cornfield.
Terrified, humiliated, the girls turn to run,
and left childhood lying in the driveway
or Riverside Park.
I can imagine them on the bus ride home
faces streaked with salt,
And ringing in their ears, the voice of a man
one might be tempted to dismiss as a cartoon cop
policing carousels and cotton candy,
but a man who given the right opportunity
might have easily fit in with
certain distant colleagues
who at that moment
after a hard day loading their
pale, emaciated charges into the hungry ovens
were sitting down to family supper
and in the morning, would
calmly brush from their cars
the fine gray ash that drifted day and night
from silent, lead-colored skies.
DNA
The young woman on the bus
wearing headphones
has a mole on her neck.
Perhaps the same mole
in the same place
on some ancient ancestor
itched with sweat
as she crawled on her knees
through the king's garden,
back bent, pulling weeds.
II
I know someone whose husband died
a month after their baby's birth.
Years later, she had to turn away
to hide a flood of tears
when her teenaged son
brushed the hair from his girlfriend's face
with the same gesture
as the father he had never known.
III
There are mysteries greater
than the birth of galaxies.
That sound you hear
the moment before sleep
is not the wind but your own flesh
in a whispered conversation with itself
as old as time.
Long Live the Queen
(for Ella Fitzgerald)
Fourth of July, 1958
at a backyard barbecue
my face buried in a plate of hot dogs,
baked beans and coleslaw,
when a voice sliced through the grease and smoke-
a voice as hot as grandma's barbecue sauce
as cool as lemonade on ice-
a voice that changed everything.
A singer with a strong sense of rhythm
is said to "keep good time."
Ella, you didn't just keep time
You grabbed him by the ankles,
turned him upside down,
shook the change from his pockets
flipped him back onto his feet
slapped him on the ass
and sent him on his dazed and dizzy way
cheek smeared with scarlet lipstick.
When you got it goin' eyes shut tight,
sweat rolling down your face,
your sidemen wore the same amazed expressions
the apostles exchanged that time
Jesus called Lazarus back for an encore.
Five hundred years from now
on a mining ship light-years in outer space
Some young jazz cat will be lying in bed
listening to you sing Moonlight in Vermont
Someone who's never breathed real air
or walked though an autumn forest
but hearing your voice
will reach out with eyes closed
to take a fallen maple leaves,
And breathe its faint perfume.
