My dad buried two dogs in the backyard:

Bird dogs, they say—

the kind that chase something in flight.
try to capture with its teeth
a winged ceremony,
feathers dripping from each of their mouths.
The first dog was just plain old.
The second died of a heart worm pill—my father neglected to purchase.
What else has he let die?
My mother fixed his plate every night,
never bought a car, or shoes, or skirt
without his permission.
She birthed children and raised them.
She, my sister, and I—

winged things in the air.
I knew there was blood under the ground.
No surprise when I found the house was sinking.
Our dogs always stayed outside, not allowed
in the living room.
Only the basement,
where my father stayed, slept, fixed things.
My mother, a silent companion.
The dog barks and my father goes running.
The dog dies
and we bury my mother.
Graves for everyone
We bark
and feathers fall from my father’s teeth.
He barks and becomes the tree.
The bark remembers phantom noose
and screams.
The screech becomes a bullet
without a window to land through,
just a body,
a backyard,
a shovel.

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“Throughout this poem, I am exploring the complex relationship that I had with my father before and after the death of my mother. I explore the way I observed the marriage of my parents as a young girl. The neglect that I so often felt from my father was also mirrored by the way that I too, neglected my father. I am using metaphor and imagery to show the reflective nature of trauma, grief, and pain. I also shift back and forth from past to present tense, attempting to display the way that memory manifests: not always clear or true to reality, sometimes in pieces, sometimes in short vivid snapshots. This poem is about a Black family that experienced an immense amount of trauma and how we all tried to pick up the pieces; we were all victims, we are all survivors.”
—Barbara Fant

Black Lives Matter Anthology

“To arrive in a place.

And this place in which you have arrived finally: a place you have always dreamt of arriving”

—“Using Black to Paint Light: Walking Through a Matisse Exhibit Thinking about the Arctic and Matthew Henson” by Robin Coste Lewis