For 6:08 a.m. During a Carolina Spring

Earth whispers secrets of universe
right before dawn, man,
Not your dream dripping with sex
but actual calculations that began
that Big Bang,
Voicemail passwords.
Precise locations:
Xanadu
El Dorado
Wakanda
Reminders to send email:
text back,
exercise
meal prep.
Forgotten email addresses
Lost treasure maps
Anniversary dates
How to dig to China
Subway schedules
Coordinates of Atlantis
Office game face
Fountains of youth
call your mother.
As earth holds her breath
a crystal quiet wraps around her
your heart beats
last star winks,
folds into a sky, man. 

My Mother Would NEVER! 

In the late 1970’s the Battery was the place to be on Sunday afternoons--chirren! It was a fashion show, car show, disco, and lounge all in one. Sometimes my short skirt and I would walk all the way from my Westside Charleston house to the Battery and back. But my mother never would go. She flat refused because, she said, they wouldn’t let her go when she was growing up and she didn’t care nothing about it now. She wouldn’t go to the Library on King Street either. Born in 1927 she had to go to the “Negro library on Kracke Street”. I knew nothing about Negro libraries. Uplifted by my mother and her friends who could not and now would not go.  Brought into this new century on their backs. Placed on pedestals. We were all lifted to the Gods. I believe that when I bought my first Camaro, I talked her into riding to the Battery with me. You know she wouldn’t get out of the car. The sunshine, Atlantic Ocean and fresh salt air beckoned her though. She answered by rolling the window down and looking at the horizon. She stopped looking when her glance got over to Fort Sumter. It became a stare and I sped away.

Cobblestone streets know
secrets so when they “krak teet”
a red smoke rises

Yvette R. Murray is an award-winning poet and the author of Hush, Puppy (Finishing Line Press 2023) and Celebrate We Gullah Geechee (Free Spirit Publishing 2026). She has been published in Chestnut Review, Aunt Chloe, Emrys Journal, Litmosphere, A Gathering Together, and others. She is the 2022 Susan Laughter Meyers Weymouth Fellow, a 2021 Best New Poet selection, a Watering Hole Fellow, and a Pushcart Prize nominee.  Find her on Facebook and Instagram @missyvettewrites or email at Missyvettewrites@gmail.com.