Ring Shout in the Rain

By Orman Day

I’m going no place wheels can take me.
My car’s parked, Carolina rain washes
down the unwiped windshield.
Between my knees a djembe. JEM-bay.
A large wooden goblet, a moon of goatskin.

The alpine drops of Jason Moran’s “Rain”
patter from my speakers.
A stream trickles from a trumpet,
drops flick from juddering bass strings.
I tap my curled fingers against the goatskin.

Plashing from a piano,
a brooklet curving across its keyboard.
A talking drum is struck and struck again.
Strings are plucked on a kora,
a halved calabash covered with cow skin.

Entranced by the ballet and keen of my fingers,
the waves rippling down the windshield,
I accept an invitation from Hypnos,
close my eyes to enter a reverie,
setting myself in a darkening forest of spruce
on the edge of a plantation blooming with cotton.

This poem was originally published in Slake No. 3. To read all of the stories from that issue, purchase the issue or subscribe at shop.slake.la.

Slaves lay down their sacks,
come dusted from the fields,
seeking the rapture of a ring shout.
My skin is an age-mottled ivory
and bears neither cicatrix nor welt,
so I keep to the shadows,
stand in the tracks of a doe.
I don’t want them to think I’m an overseer
listening for whispers of rebellion and flight,
or a dour Baptist pastor ready to damn
those who would dare cross their feet,
a sign of forbidden dancing,
unrepentant savagery in need of the lash.

Slowly the slaves shuffle and slide
against the moistening earth,
a counterclockwise circle
summoning possession and guidance.
Singers chant a melody through the trumpet,
clap their blistered hands
when brushes sweep across a snare.

A steadier rain, quickening steps,
a maelstrom of staccato and legato,
the stamping and tapping of lacerated feet.
I flatten my palms, cup them,
scratch a trail of water with my fingernails,
splash the thirsty earth with my knuckles.

An ablution of their tears and grit,
a baptismal sprinkling of heaven’s holy water.
Undulating hips, stiffened shoulders, wide-eyed wonder.
Slaves shudder and shout with a spirit’s voice.

A stutter of alpine rain, an altissimo of trumpet,
a drizzle into silence.
Dancers sag into exhaustion,
pad to the fetid air of their crowded quarters.

I open my eyes, hear a guttural cascade
from a rattling rain pipe.
Their clouds have cleared.
My storm has only begun.

This article was originally published in Slake No. 4. To read all of the stories from that issue, purchase the issue or subscribe at shop.slake.la.