For my friends at Halo tonight

Bacchae

we drive by a small town with no graveyard and people
so crackly-old they must have forgotten to die

we picnic by the side of the road
and corn husks
mutilated by ants
litter the ground
tattered as poor ghosts

expecting farmers
we instead find dancers
bloody as newborns
spinning in the fields
leaving little hoofprints in the soil

and knowing that the old people do not die
and knowing ghosts are poor
and knowing that the hoofprints are very small indeed

we begin to dance

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That poem was published in Karamu back in 2004, but tonight it's for my friends (who are probably still) dancing at Halo in downtown Bryan.

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Man, I just looked at the Karamu website, which hasn't been updated since 2003. Bad site, good journal. Stick to the poem.