Monique Mitchell is this week’s feature on “Tomorrow’s Voices Today“, the new series curated by poet and educator Mike Sonksen.

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Resurrection

The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord
and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them,
and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry.
He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”

Ezekiel 37:1-3

The devil dances
a perpetual December
in neighborhoods colored
with colored children.
Joseph’s coat had many colors:
Dirty blonde hair.
Eyes like spring skies.
He was white Jesus
of Inglewood.
Crucified
a few feet from his mother’s home.
Brittle bones lay broken
on blood-soaked sidewalks.
Marrow exposed, morrows erased.
Andre’s smile
was summer.
Its gap, large enough
to let love through.
He loved
his mother,
his children:
twins with their daddy’s eyes,
nose,
smile.
Gap.
There is a gaping
wound in the heart of the city,
much like the scars
of the Sun
who conquered death’s shadow.
I looked ‘round the valley
with God’s eyes,
saw
Children of God
rise.
Their bones do live again.