David Mills

Talking to the Bones
(spirit of enslaved New York City Chimney Sweep
Apprentice: 18th century)

What of only chimneys and flues?
This: the one moment master permitted
me to be above him

How so?
Only in filth could I gain favor

Did you ever dream?
Things like thoughts weighed
too heavy on my head

How should you be remembered?
The neck a storm; the head a cloud
unsettled by its own weather

Talking to The Bones
(spirit of Joseph Castins, only enslaved New Yorker
whose full name is known and who is buried
in New York’s slave cemetery)

Had you made Joshua Delaplaine’s acquaintance, Mr. Castins?
Death: a sad cabinet is it not?

Joseph, when did Delaplaine put you in his account book?
My account: with G-d

How did you die with a given and surname?
The first shall have a last and the last shall have a first

David Mills holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College. He’s published three collections, The Dream Detective, The Sudden Country and After Mistic. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Brooklyn Rail, Colorado Review, Crab Orchard Review, Jubilat,and Callaloo. He has received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Breadloaf, The American Antiquarian Society, and the Lannan Foundation. He lived in Langston Hughes’ landmark Harlem home.
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About Posit Editor

Susan Lewis (susanlewis.net) is the Editor-in-chief and founder of Posit (positjournal.com) and the author of ten books and chapbooks, including Zoom (winner of the Washington Prize), Heisenberg's Salon, This Visit, and State of the Union. Her poetry has appeared in anthologies such as Walkers in the City (Rain Taxi), They Said (Black Lawrence Press), and Resist Much, Obey Little (Dispatches/Spuyten Duyvil), as well as in journals such as Agni, Boston Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Conjunctions online, Diode, Interim, New American Writing, and VOLT.

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