Dream Mystique | Linda Chown

Tyre Nichols

Last night when I should have been sleeping 
I be waking and wondering after that long video of
     sound and pain 
They say I woke confused, woke with questions.
No wonder when we keep descending deeper 
Into blind thuggery.
No wonder my soul was restless 
me like a newly skinned one
Crying, gaping open to this  collective hurt.

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And We Come to Dream of Great Fights

Sometimes the bark 
of that chokecherry tree
bites all that is ripe in you
because that alien growth 
growing pushes you far inside all
delicate. and we come to dream of great fights 
Achilles, Susan B Anthony, Mohammed Ali
and we want to know 
how they did it,
how they held on to win.
Chinese parchment paper 
inscribed with your names
their flourishes
delicious aftertastes of
a commitment greater 
than what the sky could ever say

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The Puritan Mystique

We are a people still of Puritan stock 
Who learned to belittle the body.
All the great warriors Anne Bradstreet, the sweet
Jonathan Edwards, Roger Williams and Anne Hutchison
among them fought to
Be with things as they are, not as they ought to be.
One of the main fights was the flesh. They engulfed
themselves in dull  clothes covers.
Now, centuries later, many believe it fine
to throttle the flesh, to degrade it into a mass
in behalf of some principle or other.
It enrages me to read of Tyre Nichols
The disrespect of body, of his self.
We are still in Salem ostracizing and beating others.
Let’s grow up.

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©2022 Linda Chown
All rights reserved

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