Rice: Poems

Making Foots

42 Making Foots Many a foot was chopped off an African high-grass runner and made into a cotton-picking plowing peg was burned away into two festering sores was beaten around into a southern gentleman’s original club-foot design They went for our feet first for what we needed most to get ’way My papa’s feet are bad (bad) once under roof his shoes are always the first to go a special size is needed to fit around ankle bones broken at birth Sore feet standing on freedom lines weary feet stomping up a southern dust-bowl march simple feets 43 wanting just the chance (just one) to Black Gulliver jump a Kress lunch counter or two and do a Zulu Watusi zoot-suited step instead of a fallen archless wait wait wait for the time to come him wanted to put his feet up and sip himself some Papa, how you say you’ll take that coffee? Oh Baby, just make it black and bitter like me. My papa’s feet are bad they beat our feet around with billy clubs and by our raggedy feet had hoped to drag us all away Country corners and city curbs is where they hold my keepsakes some of my brothers who brush their I-talian skins off on the backs of steam-pressed pants legs Shoes first they’ll tell you shoes above all else they’ll show you 44 If your Black foot ever wakes you up in the night wanting to talk about something aching there under the cover out loud for no apparent reason There is reason ...