This week’s poem speaks for itself, and I humbly suggest that we all listen. Fela Kuti was a Nigerian musician and activist whose elderly mother was killed because of his political activity. And the “gin fan” in the second stanza refers to the 74-pound fan that was tied to Emmett Till’s neck with barbed wire.

It comes to us from Alice James Books and begins an occasional series in which we feature a poem from a Maine publisher. Based at the University of Maine at Farmington, Alice James was founded in 1973 by seven people, including former Maine Poet Laureate Betsy Sholl. The press is committed to publishing “authors that may otherwise go unheard and to collaborating closely with authors in the publishing process.”

Iain Haley Pollock’s second collection of poems, “Ghost, like a Place,” appeared from Alice James Books this fall. Pollock teaches English at Rye Country Day School in Rye, New York, and is a member of the poetry faculty at the Solstice MFA program of Pine Manor College.

dem kill my mama

By Iain Haley Pollock

Fela Kuti, after the government raided

his compound and killed his mother, carried

her coffin through Lagos streets for the reason

Mamie Till opened her son’s casket and let the world

see Emmett’s head like a caved-in gourd,

his neck burned for bearing the gin fan’s mass.

I wish I had some comfort for you. But whatever

kindnesses we’ve suffered-the strange men rocking

our cars out of the snowbank, the silent neighbor

picking up our spilled groceries-here and now

the sunlight passing through the last days

of catalpa leaves and onto the steering wheel cannot

bring the shy stutter back to our children’s tongues,

cannot sit our mothers, feet crossed at their ankles,

back in their good, burgundy-upholstered chairs.

I can offer no relief. And no return. All I have for you

is your own body, larynx still sore with the wailing,

shoulders stooped from balancing splintered wood,

from carrying on their creased plane that final weight.

Gibson Fay-LeBlanc is poet who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Poem copyright © 2018 Iain Haley Pollock. It appeared originally in “Ghost, like a Place” (Alice James, 2018) and appears here by permission of Alice James Books. For an archive of all the poems that have appeared in this column, go to www.pressherald.com/tag/deep-water.