like dry bones in the valley
you left me for dead
but i was my own ezekiel
i asked myself
can these bones live
i didn’t know the answer
but i called to them
i knew if i didn’t order those bones to live
one else would
i knew that death had whispered my name
and it was up to me to scream louder
and take away its sting
to reclaim those bones and demand them
to rise up again
i called each and every bone by name
i called flesh to those bones
and then i cried out to the four winds
so that breathe would enter that body again
and the winds answered back my body was made new
and i was no longer cut off from that
which was rightly mine
i stood up with a great and might shout
ready to do battle
ready to claim that which was mine
ready to live in these bones again
Angela Jackson-Brown is an English Professor at Ball State University in Muncie, IN. She graduated from Troy University in Troy, AL; Auburn University in Auburn AL; and Spalding University in Louisville, KY where she received an MFA in Creative Writing. Her work has appeared in literary journals, such as: Pet Milk, New Southerner Literary Magazine, The Louisville Review and Muscadine Lines: A Southern Journal. Her short story, “Girl, Too” is forthcoming in the September 2012 issue of Blue Lake Review. She has presented her fiction and poetry at events like the 2009 Limestone Dust Poetry Festival and the 2009 Southern Women Writers Conference. Her short story, “Something in the Wash” was awarded the 2009 fiction prize by New Southerner Literary Magazine and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in Fiction
Tagged poetry