Today's poem is by Shane McCrae

A Wolf's Skin Stretched Across A Drum
        [I]t is said that a sheep-skin stretched over a drum will
        not give forth any sound when struck if a wolf's hide
        on another drum is sounding at the same time.
                          —René Descartes (tr. by Walter Robert)

From which, when it       is struck, I hear my
Grandfather's voice, the man I called
My father my whole life, my child-
      hood, long,       my life from when

From after they,       my mother's father
My mother's mother,       took me, bor-
rowed me away       forever, for
      A weekend visit.       They

Said they would bring me back.      They told
My father they would bring me back
But they were white, and he was black
      And centuries of would

I hear him       when the drum is struck
A wolf's skin stretched across the drum
My mother's father, mine,       and from
      The sound in pain,       as him-

self stretched on the drum, as his own skin
Flattened across       the bottomless
Black of its mouth,       as he would dis-
      appear in the blackness, on

The next strike disappear.       But I
Hear only screaming, only suf-
fering.       I hear no music, though
      I strike and strike and strike

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Copyright © 2023 Shane McCrae All rights reserved
from Bennington Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission