It was startling to see you
staring out from a touchpad
on the ground.
Your mouths' silent cloud.
You blinked bewildered,
a patient newscaster.
You appeared engaged
even as people stepped over
you and confetti misted.
I wept picking up the screen.
How'd you get here, I asked.
My mom dropped me off, you said.
You smiled. You wore a 1950’s
fedora. You looked nice.
I scanned the crowd for your mother
but it blurred with strangers. I wondered
if she were somewhere drunk and relieved.
I held you like an empty plate.
I couldn't look in your face.
I wanted to position you
up high somewhere
so you could see everything.
But you only asked me
to hold you.
James Cagney is a poet from Oakland. He is a Cave Canem Fellow and VONA alum, both programs that foster Black writers. He has performed in venues and museums throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. His first book, “Black Steel Magnolias In The Hour of Chaos Theory,” is out now by Nomadic Press.