Gayle J. Greenlea

Homestead

There are ghosts here. They breathe in unseen spaces behind walls, under floorboards, in shafts of light filtered through dust motes. At night they drift into fields where once they put shoulders to the plow and tended cotton. Their shape, if you could see them, is amorphous as cotton fruit, diaphanous as gossamer with glints of light like fireflies…

The Night Tree

The night tree with grizzled bark,
roots milked dry by suckling humans;
starved of dignity, the arc of history
bends toward justice, dimmed. Scars
limned in moonlight, memorialize
strange fruit, harvested from branches
weary from farewelling souls
of dark-skinned men, more worthy
than murderous landowners…

On the border

The photo speaks a thousand words, one 

for each mile they travelled 

Baby on her father’s back

tucked inside his T-shirt,

face down in the waters of the Rio Grande,

hair trimmed in reeds instead of ribbons