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Danielle Hanna Daughter of Pittsburgh, circa 1940s
Born with slagshards
in her hair, complexion of slate,
amber streetlights flickering behind
closed eyelids, she
whispers to the alleycats on Liberty, rasping
lungs with the rattle of soot and riversludge.
Daughter of a city without sky, she breathes
with the smokestack’s sigh of sweat,
with the pulse bloodstitched and sealed
in the steel ribs
of bridges, she
red
My mother and your mother were hanging
clothes.
My mother punched your mother in the nose. What color was the blood?
-- Children’s choosing-game rhyme
You were short-fuse,
fire-cracker,
with thistle-pins
in your wild-red hair, perfect
teeth and a crooked smile,
always thumb-smudging
tiny cement-spiders on the stoop.
What color was the blood?
You were sweet-heart, sun-shine,
daddy’s little lap-cat
sneaking whiskey-sips and petal-pricks
slipping
up your easter-dress.
What color was the blood?
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