

E. Doyle-Gillespie
(American poet/author)
POETRY AVENUE
The Actual Price of Her Bangles
by E. Doyle-Gillespie
She will run the whole way
this time.
When the sea voices tell her to—
chanting shanties,
mouthing driftwood, barracoon songs—
she will run
the whole way
to the breakers.
She will leap the sea wall
when the voices tell her to,
the ankle bangles clanking
against mosquito-worn flesh.
She could tell you their whole
story if you cared to hear—
if the voices demanded that
she’d recite their names
and explain them across
the breaking tide,
and breaking time,
and the clank of bangles she
found one morning
lost in the cursed sands
of the Outer Banks.
They had staved off tarnish and time,
ever-gleaming young,
carrying the captive magic
from the womb of a middle-passage ship.
She wore them as art—
sensuous and hip—
against the flesh-and-bone of her leg.
Now, she must sing the songs
of the ballast people,
their voices keeping time
in her head as she runs
towards the crashing waves,
the sea wall’s wide-spread arms
and the oncoming tide.
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