Heedful Hold
An indefinite walk through a long
icy underpass, a bus
elapsing at a velocity that seems
to deform the flank’s advertisement,
the large faces of the ad’s actors
rendered ghostly and moaning.
____
Our work mutates; our children become
disallowed from group play. Our children
schooled via numbing screens. Our children more
quickly adopt the bafflement of adults.
____
Weeping alone, watching a wake
livestreamed on a funeral home’s media page;
the departed—cropped wrongly
by the mounted smartphone—
is someone whose staunch voice and gentle touch
fed many of us, we who shared
their sector of a land wrought
with laws and apathy that hunt us.
____
Where aggressors destroy
for fleeting dollars, when history’s residues,
refurbished injustice, and a virus
collaborate to crush the moss of our sleep,
we hold our babies heedfully,
reconfirming we’re the beautiful kin
of dignity’s many mothers.
Notes:
From Love’s Austere and Lonely Offices: Street Portraits and Poems by Marcus Jackson (Northwestern University Press, 2026). Copyright © 2026 by Northwestern University. All rights reserved.
This poem is part of the folio “Love’s Austere and Lonely Offices.” Read the rest of the folio in the May 2026 issue of Poetry.
Source: Poetry (May 2026)