2003 Cave Canem Poetry Prize
Winner: Kyle Dargan for The Listening
Judge: Quincey Troupe
Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Old Ways
By Kyle Dargan

~for Ms. Anna

Saturday
night, sober. Matriarch
dead passed Easter
Sunday. The message,
lost,
finds me tonight. Grief retroactive
pounces.
I grab a lock
to fend it off-pull a curl taut.
Close eyes, close scissors/
slicing to make amends,
        to make
a mend.
Amputated hair
recoils,
rigormortis-closing
like an envelope
blown to wind, no return
addressed.

My cousin's fiancé
by way of Lesotho,
taught me
this ritual: death, shed
hair
not water.
        It was the sea
that brought us our pain
in the first place.

Old Ways Copyright ©2003 by Kyle Dargan. Reprinted from The Listening by Kyle Dargan, with the permission of the author.

Copyright © 1997-2003 by Cave Canem Foundation, Inc.

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