Children’s Hospital: Memory
By Davy Knittle
(double dutch)
the bust of the fuses in a shootout
a shirt for the boy in the squad car
selective concessions to ruin,
delays, amplifications on
whose houses you burn down
whose body exempt from use
as a skin-grade waterway
who gets their temp settlements
who gets televised,
who gets up in arms
(double time)
30 to life killing a black man
life killing a white man
death killing a cop
the blacktop hot behind the house
a tunnel of gunfire in the alley
a fight for the life of the fire
a trial for the fired rioter
no trial for the firers of riots
some bloodlines cops will sever
when they want to inflict the civic
Harryette Mullen Lecture on Philadelphia Fears
By Davy Knittle
Weaponry defended me a gangsta birth, a legislative fix who’s lingo bright, he’s got reptile sweats and when the zoo loses its cage angels, he’ll be an airborne escapee, a bird line, shit, man, a canary legend
All you can do is augment the corner store selections, add an apple, a couple of cups of cut up fruit — pump open the space of the radio waves to carry comestibles, pitch a television fit, stick this digestive itch in with the houses coming down, the library lie ins, the folds in the synapse factory bucking the legend trend, what the newspaper conditions you to behoove, when to fight by burial, at the waiting pavement, the last civil platform
Independence Hallows flies a havoc flag on the visitor strip, my little fuzzcicle could perch there, down set, and have a Philadelfrolic getting a nest together
While someone waiting for the city to catch him, to send him around, to step, will watch until they can’t help but, right where they’re standing, make a live-action lake
K*tch*n F*xt*r*s (Osage II)
By Davy Knittle
Every object we touch even a child, a law, a cop busting on a man, his hands behind his back, we could make cleaner. There’s lots to scour in the kitchen, lots of potential for dirt a firm grip on some soap, the kitchen participant, finding some use for his animal mandibles, grows big here, candid, and nourished
It’s a room that’s full of it — flaunt the volume in the sink, mallets, spatulas, spoons, under the tap, the human unit — hands turning in their hyperbolic crush to wash themselves good
Tape time tempstruments monitor the heat of the faucet water here, where before she stewed, she swam on from sea to kitchen issue, electing to clean her hands — the pipes exposed and going
In the kitchen all architecture fits in around the waterlines, the sink a spire from the anchorage the groundswell system of how far a city can go
Davy Knittle is working on a collection of poems that begin with and return to the 1985 bombing of the MOVE collective in Philadelphia. The collection focuses on questions of civic identity as it relates to place and how places and communities change as their physical figures, their buildings and streets, change over time. The work began as his senior thesis in poetry, submitted jointly to the English and African American Studies Departments at Wesleyan University, directed by poet Elizabeth Willis.
Leave a Reply