whisper & smoke

After “The Urban Wild Coyote Project” by Mandy-Suzanne Wong

• Facebook
• Instagram

henry 7. reneau, jr.

__________

old man coyote // demigod/shape-
shifter /
dons a missionary’s collar/ & snakeskin boots
// cocks his head/ a God engine of whisper
& smoke/ like a politician’s wink &
a grin
of sound/byte filtered honey/ : incognito
amongst the People of Hope //

coyotes // the symbolic
chaos of disorder in white myths // They say
the illegal indigenous
are colonizing their cities/ the stigmatized/
who are mercilessly shot/
& tortuously
caught in traps/ their progeny/tear-gassed
inside their dens

// but wild things are wild/ not a rib
to be subserviently yoked/
because the walls erected to contain them/
mean nothing to them /& their Other-ness
is the filth/
that makes them feel //

coyotes are entangled/ live under constant
surveillance/
in many Amerikkkan urban networks/
where the native tribes who venerated them
were ousted or exterminated/
but coyotes survived (trickster/ finagler/&
taboo breaker)

/ : in Chicago/ radio-collared coyotes work
as civil servants/ hunting rodents
in the city center /
but gunshot splayed if they overstep their place

/like Black folk // their refusal to lie down
& die/ their adaptability/ tenacity &
elusiveness/
their uncanny staying power
even as white folks/came a-slaughtering /&
Progress

swallowed up the land/ the guns &
concrete
& asphalt of Manifest Destiny/
in the name of ‘sivilized/ is a self-
generating meta-
phor vermin //

We are the people from shithole countries /kid-
napped in tall ships /Atlantic crossing
into the Gloaming/ between bated breath
& the muted silence of dread //

now/ We root ourselves
in tribal birthmarks/ & blooms
of bruises of old blood/ remake ourselves
from jaw bones/ gri-gri wishbones/ &
backwoods ham-
bone Blue(s) /like blood diamonds
ground down /to whispers on the color line /the comet in us /
fur-sleek over sinewy muscle/ our
multi-Colored chanting Jubilee //

We were told We no longer belonged/
as our endeavor to persevere/ marched
on Baltimore/ Ferguson/ & Sanford, Florida/
seething to the surface irides-
cent in hoodoo magic/ & pixilated
kaleidoscope
to replicate ourselves/ : as many as They can count /
plus one more/
like schools of minnow
glimmering gunshot celestial neon with galaxies
/or Mason jar caged
electrical ball lightning of fettered fireflies / but
phoenix up-
risen/to roar again /up from sweat like a pyramid

/singing mighty protest songs //

__________

henry 7. reneau, jr. writes words of conflagration to awaken the world ablaze, an inferno of free verse illuminated by his affinity for disobedience & a barbwired conviction that prequels the spontaneous combustion that blazes from his heart, phoenix-fluxed red & gold, like a discharged bullet that commits a felony every day, exploding through change is gonna come to implement the fire next time. He is the author of the poetry collection, freedomland blues (Transcendent Zero Press) and the e-chapbook, physiography of the fittest (Kind of a Hurricane Press). His work is published in Superstition Review, TriQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, Notre Dame Review; Punt Volat; The Ana and Oyster River Pages. His work has also been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

__________

🢠 Back Next 🢡

To learn more about submitting your work to Boudin or applying to McNeese State University’s Creative Writing MFA program, please visit Submissions for details.