Driving West on I-75, and: Even in Dark Times

Abstract

Driving West on I-75, and: Even in Dark Times Mary Moore Easter (bio) Driving West on I-75 I slam the car door in Richmondadjust the mirror, tune to black radio.Wipers flash rain away on the routetoward Charlottesville where I will not stopbecause Nazis scared me shitlesson television last week. Shades of my pastin Virginia. Riding shotgun is Sandra Blandblack garbage bag that hanged her still around her neck.She says nothing, sits unresisting for the drive.Traffic stalls, highway still as a grave full of cars,no news of obstruction.Thirty minutes of ignorant patience required,we meet the challenge head on, tongues tied. Renisha McBride appears behind meface a gaping gunshot wound in my back seat,still considerate in her unanswered quest for help in the night,careful not to bleed black on my upholstery. Who knows why the traffic clears?Our trio moves out of rain and mist toward our destinations.My phone battery edges toward zero percent,my body wants to release all it holds.I stop over in the very place I sought to avoid.For safety, I lock them in the car at the Waffle House.I pee and drink black coffee while I charge my phone. [End Page 77] When I return they are easy in their placessettled for the journey, joined by Samuel DuBowho shares the back seat with Renisha.The left side of his head is missingfrom the police shot. He bears his injury onwarCarriers of my fear, they offer me their presencand the company of their witness. Even in Dark Times The yellow trees let their leaves downaround three brown girls.Grass, still green, receives their high heels.Beneath sky and above groundthey sport themselvesin head-to-toe redshort off-the-shoulder blueand flowers that burst from a small waistover nature's bounty.The rim of the lake perfects their poses andsun limns haloes of hair they fluff and flipas they prance for each smartphonerecording what joy fall weather can bein the spirit bodyof unmurdered girlsso black and lit. [End Page 78] Mary Moore Easter Mary Moore Easter's manuscript was a finalist for the Prairie Schooner Book Prize. She is a Cave Canem Fellow, and her work appears in Poetry, Seattle Review, Water Stone, Calyx, and Fjord's Review, among others, and in the anthology Blues Vision: African American Writing from Minnesota. Her chapbook Walking from Origins was published by Heywood Press. A Virginia transplant, Easter re-rooted at Carleton College in Minnesota, where she was founder and director of the Dance Program. Now emerita professor of dance, veteran dancer/ choreographer, she is a member of Penchant, aka the Northfield Women Poets, and is represented in the group's four anthologies: Absorb the Colours, A Rich Salt Place, Tremors, Vibrations Enough to Shake the World, and Penchant (Heywood Press). Her honors include a Bush Artist Fellowship, multiple McKnights, the Loft Creative Non-Fiction Award, and Ragdale and Anderson Center residencies. She co-mentored in the Givens Black Writers Program. Copyright © 2018 University of Nebraska Press