David Mills

TO THE BONES: ABOUT THE BEADS: TALKING

(spirit of an enslaved, New York woman with beads found in her grave)

That clear glass bead with a clear green heart in your grave?

That ocean we could not see 
when we was dragged across 
is a drop we shrunk and shackled 
It’s now our glittering revenge

There’s a bead in the ground near what would have been your left ear—its lobe

Like all flesh, my lobe
(a bead I would 
tickle and tug) agreed 
to the earth’s demands

Would this bead have clutched your hair?

Hair like skin also jilted 
my bones, so that bead was left 
nothing to cling to

What about the grey beads with eight facets?

Some beads got many sides. 
Like stories. ‘Spec’lly the ones
that are hard to hear…May I 
ask you something? 

I’m all ears

What is what you call wax for?

An ear’s bodyguard to stop entry and injury

Well that bead you spotted
close to what once was 
my ear, thought of wax 
as a skull’s soil as sound’s 
sugar: bitter and caked 

David Mills is the author of The Sudden Country, The Dream Detective, and After Mistic. He has received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Breadloaf, The American Antiquarian Society, and The Lannan Foundation. He has an MFA from Warren Wilson College. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Colorado Review, Crab Orchard Review, Jubilat and Fence. He lived in Langston Hughes’ landmark home for three years and wrote the audio script for Macarthur-Genius-Award Winner Deborah Willis’ curated exhibition: Reflections in Black:100 Years of Black Photography, which was shown at the Whitney and Getty West Museums. The Juilliard School of Drama commissioned and produced Mr. Mills’ play The Serpent and the Dove. He has also recorded his poetry on ESPN and RCA Records.