[Greenwood Ghosts Dress Their Sunday Best]

after Gwendolyn Brooks’s “We Real Cool”

   this no parade for your pleasure

           no one winds up brass band
           stand celebration

this no market we knife
melons sample
     haggle down our price

           aspirin, or the lady-hand
           leather of Louise half heels,
           some our bit-o-honey, salted seed

              from Ferguson Drug Store
              & Grier Shoemaker

      no one here hunch their back,
      low eyes, pantomime themselves
      minstrel or maid

we don’t give—
    we grand

    stand our own
    streets

           headlining Tulsa
               Star newspaper,

     Attorneys Spears, Saddler, & Chappelle.

               we call Lazarus up from the dead,
his bluebonnet gurney in
     Frissell Hospital’s
     basement

     just seen to be seen we filled
     out, we bright enough, we gold-

end weed, we oil reserve, we keep

                 no time, we Bunn’s Shoeshine
        gospel. we holy

                                 spirits
broken from the mouth
& matchsticks
of Bethel Adventist Church pews

             past Abner & Hunter
             Barbershop, Carter Billiards,

                     Hardy Furnished Rooms
                                 Dixie Theater—

                  you mistake our procession for ghosts
                       envious, the figurative
you claim we isn’t

                       so why you stop and stare
is our beauty so vain it a form

             of resistance?