Heather Bourbeau
Two Poems
Echoes (for Freddie Gray)
The sun shone bright
as players came out
to music ricocheting
off bleachers empty
save for cameras
and three scouts.
Caleb Joseph tipped hat,
black and white, to stands,
signed autographs
for no one
before national anthem
played without irony.
Yet it was the stillness
of bases run in silence
that quieted,
if only for a moment,
the chatter of a nation
unaccustomed to self-reflection.
They did not want
to divert police and military.
They did not want
to postpone game.
We did not want
to see the anger
(and confusion).
“This is a slow-rolling crisis”—
like water slaking thirst
came Obama’s words—
as a nation, he said,
“We must search our souls.”
Until today, I thought
we, the spectators, were extraneous.
Even after games in Havana
with drums and rum and a joy
that surely spilt into the dugouts
and onto the field,
I did not see the sidelines
as the attraction.
Years ago, under a light rain
I came to Camden Yards
to see a Cuban team defeat
the Orioles—spectacularly—
before 48,000 fans.
A brief respite from tensions,
the trump of shared love.
Today, in these stands
there was a false refuge
from the barricades,
but no salve for the pain
of men lost,
no greatness before history—
only the ricochet of the pain
of Charm City.
The Last Passenger[1]
“Pennies a piece” her family and friends
had clustered and climbed the skies
to their demise.
Their flocks eclipsing the sun,
their numbers tempting the triggers.
Solitary was the key to longevity, she now understood.
She was alone, caged
with only the name they gave her
as there was no one left who spoke her language.
The husband they gave her died
like everyone else she had actually loved.
She understood, but did not want her celebrity,
her existence enough for bulbs and banter.
On good days, she hoped for a miracle—
if not another of her kind, at least a companion.
On bad days, she thought,
it would have been kinder to kill me as well.
[1] Martha (c. 1885–September 1, 1914) was the last known living passenger pigeon. She was named after George Washington’s wife, and immediately following her death in 1914 at the Cincinnati Zoological Gardens, she was shipped to the Smithsonian.
Heather Bourbeau’s fiction and poetry have been published in 100 Word Story, Alaska Quarterly Review, Cleaver, Eleven Eleven, Francis Ford Coppola Winery’s Chalkboard, Open City, and The Stockholm Review of Literature. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her work has been featured in several anthologies, including Nothing Short Of 100: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story (Outpost 19), America, We Call Your Name: Poems of Resistance and Resilience (Sixteen Rivers Press), and Respect: Poems About Detroit Music (Michigan State University Press). She was a contributing writer to New York Times bestselling Not On Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond with Don Cheadle and John Prendergast. She has worked with various UN agencies, including the UN peacekeeping mission in Liberia and UNICEF Somalia. She is a member of the New York Writers Room and the Writers Grotto.