Flashbacks

For Essex Hemphill

My Sunday afternoon seems perfect

Lined up with chicken and wild rice soup

Easy listening music and diverse conversation

Clinking coffee cups and exercising keyboards.

In a corner all by myself

In this active café atmosphere

I think of Essex.

38 when he perished

So young from the illness.

I’m reading every poem I can find

To be completely enriched by his spirit.

Short literary career with few writings published

But he became contemporary

Legendary to me.

I crave all of his lines to eat with my eyes

His stanzas to make my intestines feel holy

So I can feel pushed to keep building my own

Honing my blessed crafts.

I’ve read Overtones

American Wedding

For My Own Protection

American Hero

Family Jewels

Educating myself with this sweet tea poet

Whose philosophies I just uncovered

Helps solidify my pride as an openly gay black man.

In death he teaches me

Enforcing the pieces of one’s distinct self

Touching my cerebrum.

He acknowledges the sin of calling the left hand gay

Calling the right hand black

Says it all comes in one package.

Bring on the verses, Essex.

Bring on the prose.

He can’t write from the grave

But I can reinterpret and remix repeatedly

Making it feel like new warm loads of freethought.

He wrote of ceremonies.

This is a ceremony of his voice

That pulsates to stretch mine wider