Fire
In the old city incendiaries abound
who hate this place stuck to their footsoles
Michael Burnhard is being held and I
can tell you about him pushed-out and living
across the river low-ground given to flooding
in a shotgun house
his mother working for a hospital
or restaurant dumpsters she said a restaurant
hospital cafeteria who cares
what story
you bring home with the food
I can tell you Michael knows beauty
from the frog-iris in mud
the squelch of ankles
stalking the water-lily
the blues beat flung across water from the old city
Michael Burnhard in Black History Month
not his month only when he was born there
not black and almost without birthday one
February 29 Michael Burnhard
on the other side of the river
glancing any night at his mother’s wrists
cross-hatched raw
beside the black-opal stream
Michael Burnhard still beside himself
when fire took the old city
lying like a black spider on its back
under the satellites and a few true stars
Adrienne Rich (1929-2012) was born in Baltimore in 1929 to a Protestant mother and a Jewish father, and she achieved acclaim early on for poems that were praised for qualities like control and elegance. She later moved away from the formal restraint of her early work and towards an aesthetic more in line with her increasingly radical politics. From the early 1960s onwards, Rich insisted on bringing together the personal and the political in poems and essays that explore issues such as motherhood, sexuality, racism, anti-Semitism, and war. Through her work, Rich shows how even the most intimate moments can shed light on pressing political issues, while also revealing how politics inform every aspect of our lives.