It Shakes Us Still

It Shakes Us Still Jamaal May (bio) After the Baptist retreat cartoonsand health class slideshow insistedsex was only good for courting AIDSand babies and pustules, a fingernailtraced across chest earthquakes us still,and the gods still build heartslike hearths in homeless shelters,a permanent place for the temporaryto gather and liquefy the frost on their hands.An ungloved hand in winter slid under shirtshakes the ice free. No one believes mewhen I say his ten fingers, together,are the smallest cult or choir gatheredto worship the smallest demon or deityexcept for the pastor. This makes sense to himthe way animation always will to me,even at an age when time has hurledall its hand grenades at the imagination.And because this is where I learnedthe incorrect color of heartsand that giving a hug means taking one back,I’ll always believe the bodily destructionthat waits at the bottom of a gorgefor those of us stupid enough to look downisn’t stupid enough to try to killthe coyote in our blood that made us leap. [End Page 506] Jamaal May JAMAAL MAY is the author of Hum, his first book, which received the Beatrice Hawley Award from Alice James Books, the American Library Association’s Notable Book Award, and an NAACP Image Award nomination. His other honors include the Indiana Review Poetry Prize, the Stadler Fellowship, and the 2014-2016 Kenyon Review Fellowship. Jamaal’s poems appear in such publications as The New Republic, The Believer, Callaloo, Poetry, Ploughshares, Best American Poetry 2014, and NYTimes.com. From Detroit, he co-directs the Organic Weapon Arts Chapbook and Video Series with Tarfia Faizullah. Copyright © 2014 The Johns Hopkins University Press

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