In memoriam: Clementa Pinckney and eight others murdered at Mother Emanuel
It’s only here where I’ve seen the surf
crimping into ruffled-up petticoats,
the edges of olive and indigo skirts
of wave, of glance, of flirt, of buff—
Rococo cream frame for the rough
tide, garlands of pale green that meet
and cross in a pattern of fishnet
on Folly Beach. It was almost off-
season when we sat in deck chairs at sunset
across the bridge from the Charleston church
where a prayer meeting was going on,
and two years later we are here again
when I notice how the waves thin out
like wedding-dress hems on the beach,
crossing in patterns like fish scales,
a cursive repetition of human ills.
LaWanda is the author of one full-length poetry collection, Light Is the Odalisque (Silver Concho Series, Press 53, 2016). Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Georgia Review, Antioch Review, The American Journal of Poetry, Ploughshares, Shenandoah, Cincinnati Review, Laurel Review, and other periodicals. “Goodness in Mississippi,” a poem in the Golden Shovel form devised by Terrance Hayes, was chosen by Sherman Alexie for Best American Poetry 2015. She received a 2020 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award.
