For Jimmy: the last stanza
I am exiled, shunned by
those politely civilized
as well as by gatherings
of wolves.
Refugee
from impoverished
maps of misery
and hopelessness.
I am expatriate,
my motherland,
the one that birthed
and then betrayed me,
no longer my home.
No songs of redemption,
no longer
praying for escape.
I am tarnished,
debased
by my own reckoning,
my refusal to rise like wind,
to carry myself forward
past wannabe warriors
clustered like jackals
on street corners.
Instead, I give in
athough I’m no gangster.
Easier to set aside dreams
than resist, risk early death.
Caught with gun, drugs, attitude
before I earn my colors, before
killing fills my resumé and brutality
transfuses my blood.
Prison for the failed, an antidote for
me, retreat from worse alternatives
as long as I hang tough, wear trouble
on my sleeve to just get by, make fear
a stranger; softness gets you killed or worse,
bravado puts me in the hole. I sit resigned
in empty dark when suddenly the cell is filled
with dazzling light. God appears without my
prayers: a chance for salvation
Carol Alena Aronoff’s poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Comstock Review, Bosque, Quill & Parchment, Before There is Nowhere to Stand, et al. She was twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has published 4 chapbooks (Cornsilk, Going Nowhere in the Time of Corona, Tapestry of Secrets, A Time to Listen) and 6 full-length poetry collections: The Nature of Music, Cornsilk, Her Soup Made the Moon Weep, Blessings From an Unseen World, Dreaming Earth’s Body (with artist Betsie Miller-Kusz) and The Gift of Not Finding: Poems for Meditation. Currently, Carol resides in rural Hawaii.