On visiting Schoolcraft Park
for black folk in nature

2018
LM Brimmer

now i know how the headwaters look:

maddie dressed in a button down
and nothing but knickers

laughing laughing and springing
forward, you realize. they can never look

another way. can never eke out
the difference in noise between a wild fox

and the rustle a stail hammock makes against
the bark of the living tree (a living god) a cold one

in noël’s hand. the way the singing sometimes
the song of what you thought was elk. the elder

you thought was song, each and every time the moon
was caught up in its wide mouth, this violent

wrinkle in time. we didn’t just bring plates to the
headwaters expecting to eat; we didn’t just

bring a hungry mouth expecting to talk too much.
we couldn’t hope before this would be any better.

we couldn’t find our hands from our hands at the ends
of our wrists. Winona reminded us of the pleasure in hope.

things we should know, we don’t. we smiled and she smiled
and her radiant, tawny skin bespoke the future

like lake water every day all year round. even sipping the way
she talked. conduits flush with fire flickering eyelashes of almost

bluelight. something that after the youth just spilled, plenty, and upward
and singing with constant heat with constant ponytail heat

constant revelation of the sun between us and her yellow sliding drawers
her godself some citrine candle, completely proud and round and warm.

this is the way it could be. finding halves of ourselves in
sometimes hanging, sometimes wafting letters. this chest heavy night keeper

came back once or twice. oh, how johnnay and adja would laugh. what if I told
you this was a man made lake he said laughing again. and in quiet

we are fire - hymn quiet and aware of each other. what if I told you
this was a man made fire. That we could have the sun.

On Visiting Schoolcraft Park was previously published in
PRIDE GUIDE 2018 - The official 2018 Twin Cities Pride Magazine