In the Negro section of Nashville
By Sheree Renée Thomas

blood rises on hot summer wind
crepe bushes, honey petals trickle past
rough solemn wood
Inside your yard, the grass smells of heat
You nudge half-awakened stones
hands caress still curves, await birth
weeds spin in the shallows
gnats erupt on quicksilver wings
float on warm shadows
chisel in hand, words are wedged between air
between breath, between blood
blow by blow, stone spirits rise and fall
softer than the curled eye of death

Here, the trees know how to wait
smell dust on wind and know rain is yet to come
You’ve grown lean, walking along
the city streets under a glassy sky
whispering to steps, crumbling curbs as you pass
stone for marrow and dust for skin

The wind sings strength

to your carving hand

Copyright © Sheree Renée Thomas. All rights reserved. Used with permission of the author.

Sheree R. Thomas was awarded the 2003 Ledig House/LEF Foundation Prize for Fiction for her novel, Bonecarver. Her anthology, Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora, won the 2001 World Fantasy Award for Year's Best Anthology and the Gold Pen Award. The volume was also honored as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, received a Washington Post Editor's "Rave," and was named an Amazon.com "Essential Book." Her second anthology, Dark Matter: Reading the Bones was published in 2004, and won the 2005 World Fantasy Award for Year's Best Anthology. Co-publisher of the literary journal Anansi: Fiction of the African Diaspora, she is founder of Wanganegresse Press. Her poetry and short stories have appeared widely. Recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, she teaches fiction at the Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center in Manhattan. Thomas is currently editing a third volume of Dark Matter and a poetry manuscript, What Spirit Took.

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