Double Helix
I.
At night, my father played piano & sang, his voice our raft on a quiet lake, an island of gentleness & because gentleness is a choice, I know something—, I have told you something essential about my father & the history of black people in America. & because he looked at my mother & me as if we were divine, brilliant, bright children of god & because if gesture & spirit have weight, my father’s equaled two thousand blooming peonies, I have told you something about faith & the history of black people in America.
**
Scientists are full of news these days: We are rotting fruit lain to ground. In each breath we inhale thousands of humans collected on the tongues of leaves, in the pink eyes of peonies, on the powdery backs of pollen. Exhaled. With each draw, a millennia of history enters us & we cannot control, can only harness whom or what we host. Our traumas, the bright blue mysticisms & burnt orange murmurs, our joys & muddled currencies are archived in genetic code.
**
I am not of my father’s blood but am of my father, which is also the history of black people in America.
**
At my 6th birthday party, the parents drank martinis & sangria in white linen & silk as we played on the Slip-n-Slide while the desolate beast next door snarled & snapped through the fence, our jubilation magnifying his rage. He leapt & whipped into an ever-reddening frenzy. & because pain will out, & because hatred will out, & because my father sensed a shift in the air because he deeply believed my mother & me divine & the faithful have second sight, & because some Alabama-born malice had taught him a lesson to do with mercilessness, the way danger wets the wind, my father tore into the house emerging with a finger on a gun’s trigger. He stood sentinel the rest of the day, gun slack on his thigh, squinting at the feverishness at the fence—as we leapt & shrieked & at cake.
**
This is what I was trying to explain to Avi when I sent him that book about the black migration from the American south. I was trying to say: we have cause to care for & track our wounds. To be anything other than enraged or dead is to be a success if black in America. To become a refuge, a safe harbor is to be a miracle if black in America.
**
His ailing father listened quietly as Avi read aloud passages about the vicious hand of the south & burnings & bodies & swinging, cold chicken & packed trains, escapees casting towards a northern brink they could not fully understand, away from an ending they did. & because hatred will out & because we cannot control whom or what we host. & because his father is a holocaust survivor, in a moment of lucidity, he asked sadly: “Son, why do you insist on reading me my story?”
**
So we, the Jewish son and African daughter, mouths bursting & soured with flowers & fauna, rotting leaves & peonies & men banging at the midnight door, stood as an ecosystem of gas & fire, double helixes & light, the story of-, the choices of-, our fathers knotted between us. & because I wanted to touch his face as my own, & because I felt his skin shudder as my own, understood his father’s stubble as my own & because what are we if not our brothers? & because there has always been binding & burning & escaping & enduring & because I know no better way to understand the history of humans than to tell you the story of my father’s choice to be a raft on a lake, which, no matter what more you might be told, is the true story of black thought, black life, black people in America.
II.
At night, my father sang, his voice our raft on a quiet lake, an island of gentleness & because gentleness is a choice, & because in each breath we inhale thousands of humans collected on the tongues of leaves, on the powdery backs of pollen, I have told you something essential about the history of black people in America. & because he looked at my mother & me as if we were divine & because we are really only rotting fruit lain to ground & because if gesture & spirit have weight, my father’s equaled two thousand blooming peonies, I have told you something about history: With each draw, a millennia enters us & then we harness & we host. Our mysticisms & currencies are archived genetic code. At my 6th birthday party, the beast next door snarled & snapped through the fence, & because in each breath we inhale thousands of humans collected in the pink eyes of peonies, on the powdery backs of pollen, our jubilation whipped him into an ever-reddening frenzy. & because pain will out, & because hatred outs—& this is what I was trying to say when I sent Avi a book about the black migration from the American south—my father sensed the shifting air, & because some Alabama-born malice had taught him mercilessness, the way danger wets the wind, my father emerged from the house finger on a gun’s trigger (to be anything other than enraged or dead is to be successful if black in America). For the rest of the day, he stood as a refuge, a safe harbor, gun slack on his thigh, glaring down the feverishness at the fence & we leapt & shrieked & at cake. Avi read aloud passages from the book about the vicious hand of the south & because hatred & because we cannot control, & because Avi’s father is a holocaust survivor, he asked: “Son, why read me my story?” We stood as an ecosystem of double helixes, Alabama & Holocaust knotted between us. & because I wanted to touch his face as my own, as if we were divine, brilliant, bright children of god & because I felt his skin shudder as my own, as if we were divine, brilliant, bright children of god, understood his father’s stubble as my own & because what are we? & because there has always been binding & escaping & enduring & because I am not of my father’s blood but am of Avi’s father, I know no better way to explain the history of humans than to tell you at night, my father played piano & sang, his voice our raft on a quiet lake, an island of gentleness & gentleness is a choice, is a miracle in America.
Copyright © 2015 Crystal Williams. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in the American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry, and online as part of the MoMA’s “The Migration Series Poetry Suite.”
Crystal Williams is the author of four collections of poems, most recently Detroit as Barn, a finalist for the National Poetry Series, the Crab Orchard Poetry Prize, and the Maine Book Award. She is broadly published in journals and anthologies and is an active citizen in the arts community and, in particular, the literary community. She currently serves on two Boards of Directors—The Barbara Deming/Money for Women Fund and the Maine Humanities Council. An arts advocate, she regularly speaks on topics related to equity and inclusion in the arts. She is a senior administrator and professor of English at Boston University, where she works to help the institution and its people align their stated values with their behaviors, practices, programs, and policies. Undergirding all that she does is a line of poetry written by Gwendolyn Brooks: “We are each other’s harvest; we are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.”
Watch a video of Crystal Williams reading “Double Helix” here. Watch the debut of “Double Helix” along with readings by Rita Dove, Nikky Finney, Terrance Hayes, Tyehimba Jess, Yusef Komunyakaa, Patricia Spears Jones, Natasha Trethewey, Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, and Kevin Young, in this reading at MoMA in conjunction with One-Way Ticket: Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series and Other Visions of the Great Movement North. Explore Williams’s other work commissioned by MoMA in this video of her reading “Year After Year We Visited Alabama” in response to Lawrence’s “There Were Lynchings” and “Elegy for Us” in response to Faith Ringgold’s “American People Series #20: Die.” Visit Crystal Williams’s website here.
Poet’s Note
Increasingly, I’m interested in the marriage of form and content. Can the words and their relation to each other reflect the poem’s content, in this case, our DNA. So, while I wasn’t interested in writing a concrete poem, I was interested in finding a way to suggest interrelation and interdependence, transformation, and the communal. In this way, the content of this poem’s assertions suggested that an amended contrapuntal, a form that I’ve used in the past, might work. The poem was written in response to the convergence of multiple artistic endeavors, each of which spoke strongly to me about history—one was the Migration Series exhibit at MoMA for which the poem was commissioned, and one was the book The Warmth of Other Suns. When these two things converged in the middle of a conversation I had with a former Board of Trustees member, the poem made itself clearly known. It was relatively simple to write once the conceptual framework emerged—and once I freed myself from the tyranny of the line, which allows for much greater freedom, easier music, and less self-consciousness in general. Although, I suspect that means that for some people this is less a poem than a lyric prose piece. They can go kick rocks.
