America’s First Female Muslim Judge Found Floating in a River
for Sheila Abdus-Salaam
In April we will find her body.
It is March. New York is gray, in between
seasons like a heart undecided
between new love and loss.
No one knows why we found her
here, the dark truth of her body rising
up from underwater. Last night, while I was walking
down Broadway, some man across the street
called me a nappy-haired spic. Near the river
cherry blossoms ripen pink as wounds
against the sky. I can’t believe
what we do to each other. Snow turns to fog
turns to dust over the branches. In ten, fifty, two hundred years
who will believe us when we say
the Earth was a hopeless chant, any man
was our captor. If I’m alive then I’m ashamed
of my mouth, silent as a thief. The man on my street corner
who begs for change, whom I choose
not to see. No one’s life is the problem. The problem is a poet
can’t always lay down in words a feeling
they know they’ll never forget. When they say
I shouldn’t feel powerless I agree, but many times
I’ve stood at the lip of this river
and wanted to crawl in.
The M60 rolling past me, kicking up muck. Maybe
the problem with the living isn’t their sorrow,
it’s that they’re still capable
of violence. The feeling I can’t forget is similar to flowers
falling quiet as knives
on the spring-punched street when they pull out
my body by the hair, and she lives.