Living Dead: For Nathaniel Mackey

On the evening of November 5^th
like King Oliver (c.f. "Call of the Freaks") with
Albert Ayler took the ferry
out dixieland's constraints--but very
to the Statue of Liberty
near: the transition fertily
and jumped off as
hatched in old cadences:
the boat neared Liberty Island
the slurred "wor'd without end"
On November 25^th his body was
or cause cousin to "'cause, cuz"
found floating in the East River
the limb, even when severed
at the foot of Congress
survives as prayer for redress
Street Pier in Brooklyn
or in the orphan one took in
"My blood has got to be shed
"a child will lead," he may have said
to save my mother and my brother"
"another"--or, earlier, this other:
as one in/with the unrhymed line:
"If I'ma break the rules, I'ma learn em"
the way to a man's heart is through his sternum

Michael Magee is the author of a dissertation from the University of Pennsylvania entitled "Emancipating Pragmatism: Emerson, Jazz and Experimental Writing" and a chapbook of poems, Morning Constitutional (Handwritten Press, 1999). His essay on Ralph Ellison's Juneteenth is forthcoming in Review 21 (2000), and new poems are out or forthcoming in Washington Review, New American Writing, and CrossConnect. He edits the poetry journal Combo and teaches at Wheaton College in Massachusetts.

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