I

There is neither Jew nor Greek,
slave not free, male nor female --
all are one in Christ's body.
Galatians 3:28

I am searching for a body
to hold these lives together,
to hold these lines together.
Row houses share walls like chambers
of the heart, like air and blood share
my skin, and memory hinges
on shared boundaries -- the sting
of gingerale and I am standing by the vending machine
as Keith takes the change from my hand
and slips it back into my pocket, buying me
soda, and telling me he is moved by my not having
a home -- this Christian youth convocation a bridge --
but the continuous span of a continent,
the deep indivisibility of land
did not comfort me at seventeen.
In the New Testament, Jesus heals a leper by touch
and tells him, "Do not speak of this."
How can we heal by touch? Our denomination does not
forbid dancing -- Keith does not want me to dance
with anyone else. Slow dancing is like sickness,
or leaning against an oven door, my camisole sticking
to collarbone and ribs, sweat catching in the waist of my skirt.
I did not want my hands raised to his shoulders.
I wanted them held up in blessing, behind an altar,
as when I led the liturgy in the domed meeting room,
like the inside of a glass paperweight, waiting for God
to shake us, a thousand people curved around me,
my voice thin as a tuning fork, response coming back,
sounding in my throat, many voices, the vibrating air.
What can be healed by speech?
Keith and I, we each saw ourselves behind
that altar. God was the leveler of bodies; by violence
we could stand there, a black man, a white woman.
He said goodbye, holding me, my arm caught
across my chest, hearts beating like the slap of a bolt
of cloth across the measuring table. I couldn't move,
but then -- isn't this incredible? We could walk
away from each other.

II

We are animals meeting an unknown breed, the reek
the size, where to find the right softness. Against this door.
Coiled into each other under the brown and white cloth. Trying
to come closer than that. A step past territory.
Michael Ondaatje

Philadelphia was my new home. I sat on the steps of the church,
where my mother worked, and read Ondaatje's Coming through Slaughter,
a book I did not understand, but drawn to this meeting and searching.
Screwed together -- this is what I thought sex was -- screwing
two bodies together, tight, threads stripped, still, fastened,
and indefinite. How did it end? Why come together for this
heaviness? The burden of some man's body weighing into mine.
But then I was reading about motion, past territory --
Did I believe it? If motion carried us out of dying, would we finally want
to keep our flesh? This congregation, we hoped to leave our bodies
even as we took communion, even as we remembered flesh
on our tongues, worship of white skin confirmed
in wafers of bleached flour. The elevated train rattled the windows.

III

For that I never knew you, I only learned to dread you,
for that I never touched you, they told me you are filth,
they showed me by every action to despise your kind;
for that I saw my people making war on you,
I could not tell you apart, one from another.
Muriel Rukeyser, "St. Roach"

In a neighborhood I never saw,
John Africa set his people apart.
He called them MOVE -- the letters standing
for nothing anyone can remember -- the walls of the row house
reinforced with railroad ties, a bunker on the roof,
constant speech over a loudspeaker, and garbage that no one
would collect, scraps left for stray animals, swarms of insects.
The members wanted to return to nature.
Mrs. Wilson says, "We are not going to be run
out of our house. We exterminate all the time,
until it got like the air was heavy with smells
And it did no good. My children wake in the night from bug bites."
And over the loudspeaker, Conrad Africa saying,
"If you exterminate the bugs, you exterminate us."
Mr. Wilson says, "We would always speak, whether they spoke.
We gave them the courtesy, them being other human beings,
that we should speak to them."
How do you go back to nature? John and Conrad kept speech,
but the women already marked for nature, set apart, bearing
children alone in the house, biting off the umbilical cord,
licking the baby clean. I find myself
asking why did the women stay,
the question always asked of women.
Mr. Wilson asks city officials what they could do,
"They said, 'It's up to God.'
I think what's gonna have to happen is something drastic.
And then maybe an act of God will happen."
God is an emergency. God emerges from something drastic.
God acts.

IV

Cut hair. Above me revolving slowly is the tin bladed fan,
turning like a giant knife all day above my head. So you can
never relax and stretch up. The cut hair falls to the floor and is
swept by this thick almost liquid wind, which tosses it to the
outskirts of the room.
Michael Ondaatje

I want to tell this story straight
through, in one breath, find the beginning
like the Bible's begets, name the fathers
of destruction. How did the need to serve warrants
to three members of MOVE beget one man dropping
a bomb onto the roof of the MOVE house?
The bomb dropped from the state helicopter was a two pound
C-4 plastic explosive, packed in a satchel, resembling
a child's bookbag. The bomb was constructed
by the Philadelphia police Department bomb squad.
Police Commissioner Gregore Sambor felt if the method
of delivery had been different, carried or thrown,
the perception of that action would be quite different,
but the intent would be the same. And what was the intent?
To serve three warrants? To find God?
Ramona Africa had sent a letter of warning,
"The raid will not be swift, and it will not be clean.
If MOVE go down, not only will everybody in this block go down,
the knee joints of America will break and the body of America
will soon fall."

V

Let your light shine before men
that they may see your good works
and give glory to your Father
who is in Heaven.
Matthew 5:16

Did I kneel at my confirmation, my profession of faith,
saying, "I believe in Jesus Christ"? I can't remember.
But I know I was thinking "fuck" -- repeating it in my mind,
a word I had never said outloud, and amazed that I could
think this at the front of the church. Did I kneel,
or were only the bottoms of my feet touching the ground?
Did the minister touch me as he gave the blessing?
I can't remember. I was the one girl in the class,
someone said "a rose among thorns" but I wanted
to be light, a flame, like the dedication verse given to me.
One summer sitting around a campfire, holding candles,
surplus of light, a spark fell into my hair, and hands came down
and touched the fire out. And I wondered if the others
thought I was beautiful, just for a moment, as they said,
"You scared us."

VI

c'mon girl hurry on down to osage st
they're roasting in the fire.
smell the dreadlocks and blk/skins
roasting in the fire.
Sonia Sanchez "elegy (for MOVE and Philadelphia)"

Is it a miracle that the police evacuated the surrounding houses
before the raid? The house was a large bright ball of fire.
How do you take out a single row house? Imagine extracting
one tooth, smashing it with a rock, or slam one finger
with a sledgehammer, making sure the fingers are drawn
together ready for a slap or benediction.
Mayor Wilson Goode, Philadelphia's first black mayor,
orders the fire put out, but Sambor ignores him.
There is a videotape -- as flames swallow the house,
a man's voice is heard, "That's the last time they'll call
the police commissioner a motherfucker," and then
the nervous laughter of the men. Sambor waited 45 minutes
to order the fire out, "I was trying to get them to come out."
Birdie Africa and the other children were in the basement
with the women, wet blankets over their heads, water flooding
the floor, and when the smoke started to fill their bodies --
lungs, throat, mouth, and eyes -- Conrad opened the door,
the police started shooting. Conrad did not have a gun.
The sound Birdie heard went "Do-do-do-do-do-do like that. . .
like going off -- like bullets were going after each other."
Officers were calling, "Bring the kids out. We won't hurt you."
What forgiveness is there for children? Do we really believe
in the innocence of children? Why do we claim love for them
and forsake them just as quickly? We fear their growing hope.

VII

At least 11 MOVE members, including 4 children
were dead
Investigation report

God sends tragedies into the world
to remind us of our responsibilities to one another.
Wilson Goode

Wilson Goode was a sharecroppers' child --
one revival week he sat in the front of the church
waiting for the Holy Spirit to touch him.
Doesn't the spirit always find a way to touch the body?
Wouldn't Hell leave boundaries intact, skin not melting,
flesh never burning away, no end to this story?
We want our bodies saved from this, when you can hear
your own heart beat, and the spirit makes you leap up,
makes you walk into the voices of the congregation.
At the baptism ceremony by the river Goode's body
tensed at Rev. Bullock's touch, "As he began the baptism
ceremony, I sucked in my breath so tightly I felt like I was
going to pass out." God is knowing you are not God.
Often when Goode went to restaurants or other public places
people gave him standing ovations, for the bombing of MOVE.

VIII

Jesus said to her, "Woman why are you weeping? Whom do you seek?"
Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him,
"Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him."
John 20:15

The body of a female was recovered 10 feet from the door,
on her left foot a black Chinese slipper. Body of a child
discovered underneath her. Left forearm with clenched fist
recovered at door. Adult male from the waist down recovered.
Several small body parts. Body of one male was lifted
from the front area, with his heart outside his chest area.
Does anyone rise up from this? The body of Jesus was missing
from the tomb, but he returned whole. Mary mistakes him
for a gardener, a man who digs in the dirt and tends to what
is growing or what he allows to grow, pulling out thistles.
Then he says her name and she knows who he is.
She must have reached for his hand, or thrown her arms
around his neck because he says, "Do not hold me, for I have
not yet ascended to the Father, but go to my brethren. . ."
Mary told them, "I have seen the Lord."
How could anyone bear his ascendancy? To be whole but absent.
The MOVE house was excavated with cranes, bodies were mixed
together, animal and human bones confused. Maybe Hell is the
breaking of boundaries, body as debris, when touch becomes damage,
all the elements of earth coming down, water, fire,
air for the fire to feed on.

IX

Maude Roberts, an 83 year old woman, wanted to negotiate
peace, knew she had to listen for it, "The women in the house
seemed willing to listen to reason, but a man sounded very
desperate in his talk. He said he doesn't care if he dies."
I do not know what to do with this fact. Sometimes I hope
that it is not true, and sometimes it is the only hope I have.

X

Such a close linked chain
to hold us until we could speak out
loud enough to hear ourselves
loud enough to hear ourselves
and believe our own words
Christine Craig

Ramona Africa is the only woman to survive the bombing.
She was tried for conspiracy to riot. She is tried
for surviving. Ramona defends herself as Sue Levino Africa
is being made into a witness --
the only questions the prosecution asked Sue, "Was it hard
being a white member of MOVE? Was it hard to lose your child?"
Why do men claim they want to save women and children,
and not each other? The police said they feared the MOVE men
would use the children as a shield -- in the Old Testament Jacob
went to meet his brother Esau, who he had betrayed,
and sent the women and children first, to protect himself.
Ramona says she is only guilty
of standing up against injustice, "You see, the same prejudice
that will allow people to see a deer or possum run over on
the highway, splattered all over the ground, and just ride on it
and just look at it and keep driving, is the same prejudice
that will allow people to feel nothing about the MOVE people being killed."
There is a grammar of destruction, MOVE got themselves bombed,
those who are dead have now killed themselves, and Ramona would
not speak this way, sometimes touching the heavy wood table
in front of her, the sometimes reassurance of matter, the way truth
sometimes feels solid.

XI

Outrage: who dare claim protection for their own
amid such unprotection? What kind of prayer
is that? To what kind of god? What kind of wish?
Adrienne Rich

That summer my house burned down,
the cats knocking a lamp into the curtains.
It seems so random -- I am unchosen, just there for the spark.
The water used to save us left green dust on my books.
I threw away my Bible because I couldn't
stand the smell. When I was little,
I imagined having to crawl out the second story window,
onto the corrugated green plastic of the patio roof,
and slide to the tree rooted at the far corner.
I was scared I would fall onto the cement tiles.
I planned my way out, the formality of my long nightgown,
my bare feet and the deep snow and no one coming
and nowhere to go, bound to the disaster.
But this was fear, not truth. I used this fear like a prayer.

XII

In a life never wholly awake, wholly alive,
what do we love?
Eve Triem

There is always this hope that we can move
beyond where our bodies, the bodies of others,
have placed us. The police with their machine
guns, helmets and sticks, hardening themselves.
A city sits rigid on concrete and asphalt, and soon
there will be no place to bury our dead.
We will have to burn everyone. But what of the love for all
that is soft, for soil and muscle, the secret longing
that we will find rest and momentous waking --
returned, returned to this skin that is our home.
Birdie Africa, after being pulled from waist deep water,
nose and mouth haloed with soot, says he is hungry,
he wants something to eat.