Guinotte Wise
Let That Sink In
“…his ancestors were auctioned off in Savannah in one of the largest sales of human beings in U.S. history (436 men, women and children, including 30 babies), a disaster known as the Weeping Time.” (From Art Daily, Nov 25, 2023 “Praise House” article)
This is some serious shit
People-owning is a crime against
nature, whatever god you acknowledge,
and life itself.
Which has never been easy in Africa.
Life itself a hard way to go.
Just in the last thirty years, seventy
elderly women were burned for
being witches. That was Mogadishu.
The Blackhawk Down Mogadishu.
We are so advanced, we haven’t
done that for years. In Salem anyway.
The last U.S. lynching was in 1998.
The perpetrators were executed.
Now we are being asked to choose
which atrocity we like the best: Hamas
or Israel’s reaction to kill-rape-mutilate-
kidnap a bunch of innocents at a picnic.
Sign your choice of open letter.
(That’ll show ‘em)
OR:
Just give it all over to AI.
It couldn’t do worse than we have.
And maybe a whole lot better.
Let that sink in.
Witch-man Wielding Cane Gun Said To Be A
Co-inky-dink. If You Believe In Co-inky-dinks. I Do Not.
I had just released a free-flight model airplane
in the vacant lot; a balsa and paper plane on
which I had labored, mouth set, tongue at one
corner protruding slightly, applying glue so
carefully. It had a small Hornet gas engine on
the firewall, snarling to be freed, a minute’s
worth of fuel and as I let it go, out of the corner
of my eye I saw the overcoat man with the cane.
I feared him for no reason other than I was ten
and read too much. The plane took flight and he
raised his cane holding it in both hands, and
sighting along it like a rifle, took a bead on my
meticulously built-to-diagram splendid plane.
As he fired, or pretended to fire, the balsa and
stretched paper beauty faltered, and augered-in
as the pilots gravely say. I gathered up the
wreckage and ran home in a crazy pattern to
elude the witch-man’s cane gun; he was an ace
and wanted to add me to the notches on his
cane. I avoided him for months until I no
longer encountered him; perhaps he died but
I think he joined Werner Von Braun and went
to outer space (it was 1948 and the comics
were my primary source of information).
I told my stepfather about the incident and
he waved his hand and said, “Just a co-inky-dink.”
When he got playful with words he’d had a drink
or two and things could get dicey after that, so I
dropped it. Beware old overcoat men with canes
and people you live with if they had once worked
on the Manhattan Project, and missed it now.
Indigo
Duke Ellington played it, then a host of others,
but my indigo glows, the color of a faded denim
skirt with the selvedge worn to shreds, over tanned
legs in Hawaii, the blue listened to on a rainy day at
Milton’s Tap Room in Kansas City with June Christy
on the juke box, indigo that glows, indiglow, that voice,
she sings Angel Eyes and someone orders a round and
outside the small window, the rain takes on a hue of a
soft blue like the light on the other side of this mirror,
the dusky blue before dark in summer that brings with it
fireflies and stars and house windows lighting up and
childrens’ laughter giddy with the prospect of playing
in the dark and scaring one another silly; that indigo.
License Plate Poker
My license plate in 1955 on a 1949 Ford
was Missouri 444488.A fine winning poker hand
but far too easy to remember for my comfort as a
headstrong upstart hellion rebellion James Dean-
schooled seventeen-year-old; I often squealed
away from stop signs when I stopped at all.
And that Ford announced itself through
throaty mufflers that didn’t muffle much;
Smitty glas-pacs from Duke and Bob’s.
A cop named Rocky once told me the Ford had
the equivalent of a sign saying, “Stop me! Arrest me!”
Its lowered, chopped stance and loud pipes were like
wearing a zoot suit and a pachuco tattoo in Los Angeles.
Aggressive, devil-take-the-ass-end, all but eight,
six to carry you, two to pull the wagon. Pat hand.
Even the blue-dot taillights were illegal. And, once
stopped, my ducktail haircut and hot rodder demeanor
sealed the deal. I had not yet learned the politic ways
of the marginalized; the yessir, no sir, I appreciate
the advice sir. But I learned at life’s gaming table.
Did I ever.
