Village Verses
Little White Lies
By Jan Crawford
The palest one again
this crowded as hell subway
a thin sliver of humanity
pulsing itself straight through
morning’s dark accepting earth
pretending I’m not corrupted by my own DNA
and its sticky grip on natural superiority
even as my mythical purer blood twists,
congealing within that deadly lie
I want to scream I’m so sorry, it wasn’t me
they were blind to your even being human
they seized and battered your beautiful minds
and bodies I am just a fading old lady
innocent of course of any such crime
the air between us thick and sharp
pretending we don’t know some of mine
worked or raped to death some of yours
that Col. William Crawford did not
“take two towns doing great service”
later to be burned at the stake by Chief Pike
his penis “black and shredded and still smoking”
as a “squaw poured embers into his half-open scull”
all present praying to their particular gods
each assuming obvious righteousness
Pike’s eyes wild with revenge’s brief consolation
or that John Edwards did not bequeath his son
“a negro boy named Jeff, a brown mare, a bed”
or that my former housekeeper Maria
could never visit her mother in Juarez
or meet my awkward gestures of friendship
shots in that Texas night still ringing louder
than anything I could ever say or do
the patrol dog’s howls closer
than she could allow me near enough
to know or even imagine
and there are other truths, I do love my own
acknowledging at last their cruelty and their gifts
my bones my mind my breath itself
their desperation and their generosity,
their unexamined expectation of dominance
their blind loyalties and kindness also mine
their hearts filled with hope for life to come
and grief for the many lost too young
or forever waiting on other shores,
these lives not mine to deny or justify
when I can barely face my own complicity or know
what I am willing to return besides my shame,
drawn back once again into the inertia of belonging
to those who never considered reparations
denying you even simple gratitude
besides what could I sacrifice, this is too difficult
too hard to calculate there must be another way
too unpleasant to live without any one
of my pretty things or expected comforts
and the safety you have never felt
I’ll think about it tomorrow or next week
perhaps a bow of respect will be sufficient
or the unquestioned sincerity of these words,
a donation or supportive vote next year
or the planned bequests (if a cent is left)
when suddenly with a smile overpowering
even history’s broken promises a young woman
offers me her seat and a brief reprieve
spreads fluid grace across time’s truth
and my subterranean delusions
the only distinction now the difference of youth and age
my tribe simply having wandered toward the cooler angles
of the African sun, our skins however
forever longing for the warm memories
of their original songs and colors and ways
and tonight at my group a Shoshone elder will sing
her prayers over our withered souls widening the circle
beyond anything we deserve, dissolving time’s
evanescent reality, mine and yours, life and death,
you and I, of the mystery and what we all do know
each chant accelerating the universe’s rate of expansion
pulling all life further into the inclusive truth teaching me
a deeper acknowledgment of my part in this
and the courage to look into their sad, enraged
sometimes shockingly kind eyes
knowing tomorrow these screeching doors will propel us
into a new morning’s streets and the essential struggle
to exclude nothing, to hold it all at once together,
to know when I am free from delusion and denial
to know at last who is truly free and who is not
THE SECRET-SHARER
© 2025 Susan M. Silver
Will you be my secret-sharer?
When you smile,
The light from a myriad super moons
Floods your face,
Fringed by the thick night sky of your hair:
Will you be my secret-sharer?
When you speak,
Decades pour forth:
Youth’s audacious optimism,
The crawling caution of age:
Will you be my secret-sharer?
If but one wish remains to me
It is this:
To sit side by side, maple-shaded,
Conjuring implausible dreams
While each one’s secrets ,
The sacred sapphires of the soul,
Stir in the other’s heart
A secluded bomb cyclone
