DéLana R. A. Dameron will be reading this afternoon at Western Carolina University's spring literary festival. She holds a B.A. in History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has a strong interest in the intersections of history and literature. Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South, PMS: PoemMemoirStory, 42opus, storySouth, Pembroke Magazine, and Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review. She has received fellowships from the Cave Canem Foundation and Soul Mountain and is a member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective. Dameron, a native of Columbia, South Carolina, currently resides in New York City.
Inheritance
after Lucille Clifton
Frequented in dreams
by fresh-dead loves, so I have seen
with these eyes the eyes of a spirit
who's crossed, seen the body reject
its coffin bed and climb right out
onto the church's plank floor
seen the dove at the bed's foot
calling out all names, or the red eyes
of the flesh, abandoned. Do not say
I should be grateful for perfect eyes
or their ability to see such distances.
Say I should be grateful for sight,
for open and shut.
© DéLana R.A. Dameron. How God Ends Us, University of South Carolina Press, April 2009.
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