"Matthew"
Poetry
By Treasure Williams

“none but the righteous, none but the righteous, none but the righteous shall see god.”

it was five years past the first wave
of the michael jackson phenomenon
you were still wearing
your red and black thriller jacket
your high water pants
over white socks that were too thick
for your penny loafers
a husky football player said
hey michael
your reply: just beat it
you could quip and quote niggas
into submission
like the time we was in class
and some boy told me to suck his dick
and you said
that’s the line i’d like to be in
all he could do is fall out of your eyes
pack up his untried manhood
and sit the fuck down
that is why, when you called me on the phone
to tell me what i had hoped to never hear
i put a practical face on my voice
listening at the right bend in
the revelation
and offering advice at the cul de sac of it
but when we said bye
and i love you foolish
i dropped the phone
as if it had grown tentacles
screaming to somewhere inside your biology
no
i was transported to a place where
we had all seroconverted
where the disease had become so common and benign
that it was just like the comedian said

old folks was complaining about their sciatica
and their aids acting up
but for now when we talk
i tell you
maybe you should take that trip to hot springs
and maybe you should forgive your daddy
and maybe...

at night the cures give to me in feverish dreams
tell me that i must make a gift of some of my t cells
offer you a drink of some of my amniotic fluid
pepper your face with kisses
or let my newborn put his head on your chest
i wonder if i am up to the challenge
that when you go home to our small mississippi town to die
will i come down
bring you your favorite dish of my grandmama’s peach cobbler
sit by your bed and spoon feed you
shhhh you don’t have to say a word
will i then tuck you into thin sheets
and tip toe out
so as not to wake you
will your satisfied spirit
brush past me on the way out
light itself on my hood for a short way
just long enough to see me go in my house
and then grow so big that
the earth cannot contain it

A native of Meridian, Mississippi, Treasure is a Memphis-based writer, teacher, journalist, M.C., and emerging poet. She is the Memphis editor of the Drumvoices Revue. She has published fiction and poetry in Obsidian III, Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam, on the World Wide Web, and many other places. She is presently an adjunct instructor of English Composition at LeMoyne-Owen College and Southwest Tennessee Community College. Treasure has received an MFA from the University of Memphis’s creative writing program. The poem, “matthew,” is from her poetry manuscript, resurrecting remains.

January 2006