Public Attention

I would not recognize anyone
whose lynching was preserved
in picture postcards.

I might spot a familiar face
in the raucous crowd.

I do hear mothers wailing
through a history
of dead sons.

We do not know the history
of disappeared women.

No one ever photographed rape
like lynching, then published it
for sale at local gas stations.

Message From On High

Do the dead
pardon us
for our trespass
against them
during their lives?

And for speaking
ill of them
after they
are gone
to memory’s pasture?

The postal service
delivered
a postcard
from my father
fifty-two years late.

It was a photo
of Aspen, Colorado
and its snow glossed
mountains
with a blurred

blue note
in his poor
penmanship
that I could not
decipher.