I. The Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1878

Half the population     gone in ten days
the blue rise of bluff between river and new land
is a sky protecting us from flood        but doesn’t contain anything
but the dead leaving us

Here we learn devastation is quick
prevention a farce we spend our lives constructing
It’s a lie on the same lips as Be careful

Our beloveds step into work boots        turn back
to look at us from the porch steps we just swept
Our babies rock in bassinets at arm’s reach

Everyone can fever and go on from you
The Mississippi doesn’t forget that feeling of heat
like water craving most what’s yours

II. The Lorraine Motel

Sometimes a balcony heralds a voice like a bullet.
Sometimes a sound carries over and through.
Easier to hear, closer to God, easier to aim.

The day before, King had said, “The movement
will either begin or end in Memphis.”
Other famous men pointed to where they heard the shot, away

from a preacher and his maker. They are still pointing.
Our greatest leader fell. Riots are but a collective death rattle.
When I tell people where I’m from, no one remembers

that the murderer wasn’t from here,
that Memphis is the city that holds his last breath.

III. Isaac Hayes’s Cadillac Eldorado at STAX Records

slow spin set     doors open under stage lights      rooftop glory
every picture a tourist takes is a Vatican postcard
sky paint       ascension in leather   fur    24 karat gold windshield wipers and rims

may the soulmen in their tight pants and sunglasses
greet every Memphian from the clouds
from a heaven of jewelry    dance sweat    hair grease and alcohol skin
sound like This car   This car   Take me tonight in this car

IV. We Can Watch the Songbirds on the Wires by Our Garage

Let me hear you say alluvial plain. Let’s aim
to wash the mud from our mouths,

Kiss where we come from.
Say ramification. Say others. Say homeland.

The back molars need the deepest fillings—
feel best on the tongue.

In this town, we can’t count all the songbirds.
If we cross the street to avoid
the homeless man, we’ll miss them.

Voice is the first instrument, but they miss the other bodies
of pedal, string, and key.

Don’t trill or tweet. Say aquifer, say best water.
Without these bluffs, the Mississippi would kill us.
The ground an elevator in a sky that pleads not to flood.

Songbirds never die: Elvis, Isaac, DiAnne, Chilton, B.B., Dunn.
They stay sober now, get more
attention, their images all over the airport.

Still, they miss our words. The living mouth.