Elegies for Virginia Tech by Fred D'Aguiar

Two poems by Fred D'Aguiar from a sequence on the shootings at the college where he teaches creative writing

Read D'Aguiar's blog post on his own and his students' writing since the atrocity

Wednesday April 16, 2008
guardian.co.uk

Caribbean Cookbook For VT.

My mum cooked soul food for my final class:
Fried plantains, cow-tail in a stew of casareep,
Boiled dumplings, sliced pineapple and mango

Juice for our first meeting after the cancelled week.
One student arrived with a bouquet for my mother.
Everyone heaped Pirates of the Caribbean paper plates

For this breakfast, minus one of our number, gone
For good. We ate as if on the heels of a Ramadan
Squeezed into a week of nil by mouth, ears and eyes.

My mum flew to Blacksburg for our joint offer.
She rose before the birds and I helped her skin
Exotica and washed up to keep the kitchen spotless.

At 9AM we breezed into my Caribbean class
And served up honeydew with plates of paradise.

Date

1.
One year later finds me like back then,
Shaking my head as if a repeated gesture
Changes the facts or shakes them off
My body where they hook themselves,
Thirty-three fishhooks, one hook for
Each name, buried in me, one hook
For each life lost. Each person caught
Me on a lifeline, took one look at me
Then threw me back for another one
To catch me, hardly a glance and cut
That line and fling me again into that
Element each must fish me from
As they exit from this world hooks
With their names sunk in my flesh.

2.
I eat the spoors of the dead
When I breathe, when I walk, when I run.
They rise from underground and stay airborne.
Some lodge in the corners of my eyes and form crusts.
Others line the corners of my mouth and the lines turn
Down giving me a sour look, a frown or complaint.
Those spoors form chigoes between my toes,
Fingers and work their way to my crotch,
Until more of me is dead than living.
I am done, I am done, I am done.

3.
Index finger flicked against middle finger and thumb
Not the sound of a gun

Suck teeth, headshake, cipher circle, dozens run
Not the sound of a gun

Handclap, backslap, stilettos rap on ground
Not the sound of a gun

Knuckle crack, July 4th fireworks by the ton
Not the sound of a gun

Appalachia tut-tut, Khoisa click of the tongue
Not the sound of a gun

Drumsticks, engine backfire, pneumatic drill drum
Not the sound of a gun