Oh, how it hurt so much just to hear
By Blanche Saffron Kabengele
I sat in that restaurant in the French Quarter
with that sign hung outside
shamefully high
boasting as if
it was something
to be proud of
SLAVE TRADER MERCHANTS SINCE 1717
as I sat in that restaurant in the French Quarter
with that wall just to the right
of me
just a heap of worn
red dusty leftover
bricks
many with cracks
in them that wouldn’t
fetch a quarter
seemingly all soon
about to fall
from their
righteous
past
glory
those bricks trying hard
to hold on tight,
but mortar steady secedes
chipping away at the privilege
allowed all too many, which happened
not long enough ago to be forgotten
I sat in that restaurant in the French Quarter
with that wall just to the right
of me
in that building where steaks,
and hamburgers with or without
fries, were sold to anybody
in this now upscale
fashionable
place
where the young the old, the black
the white, all those people who make up everybody
congregate, peacefully
chattering and drinking premium beers,
and chardonnays, and politely saying
pour me another if you please
hardly paying any
attention to those faint
whimpering sounds that I heard
seeming to come from
just a heap of worn
red dusty leftover
bricks
many with cracks
in them that wouldn’t
fetch a quarter
on that 1968 day
that day I seemed
the only one privileged enough to hear them
moaning and crying
feet shuffling not knowing where to go
teardrops dropping on a dusty flo
a man talking about teeth—open your mouth, boy
then I heard him say something about wenches cooking
and all sorts of other things I believe y’all know what I mean he would say
which was clear, in truth
so clear to me that it hurt,
it hurt so much just to hear
such despair looming in the air
seeming to settle for an available place to hide
in just my ear,
so that I began to wonder whether others
just decided not to hear
or misery being fond
of desiring attention
had detected compassionate
available company.
The poems of Blanche Saffron Kabengele, Ph.D., have been published in several print and online publications, including East Fork: A Journal of the Arts, Verse-Virtual, For a Better World, The Rockford Review, and W-Poesis. Kabengele also has published the poetry collection Quiet as It’s Kept, Me Too, and Other Poetic Expressions of Life! (with Xlibris Publishing, 2018) and the nonfiction book Conjugal Relationships of Africans and African Americans: A Socio-Cultural Analysis (The Edwin Mellen Press, 2016).
“Oh, how it hurt so much just to hear” was previously published in For a Better World (2023). It is used by permission of the author.
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