Permanence in Revolution

(for Marilyn Buck)

On the carpet, draping scarlet
With jewels precious as bullets,
You face down the camera.

Beautiful white woman,
Your Amerikkka loves you;
It has forgotten who you are.

Reporters in the receiving line
Ask, "Who are you wearing?"
"Silvia Baraldini, Peltier."

"But aren’t those shoes Givenchy?"
As I watch you pace, a panther
In a circus, I wonder, why here?

Outside my window I hear a man shout,
"Helado!" The alley cats in heat
Are crying. Sirens and sirens.

I know you understand the stakes.
You wear eighty years—a gold chain,
Beautiful but rarely admired.

I imagined you glistening onstage,
But now your cloistered eyes close
In the overabundance of white light.

The inside of your eyelid
Pulses with blood, your eye
Dark as the sun in a black August.
Minutes of silence pass.
The academy claps for your dress.
Tiresias, the cell walls return.