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Invitations

Your sister's wedding picture is here.

Reminds me of a man I never met:

Your uncle, an anthropologist
in Africa. The one that likes his men
tall, slim, and dark-skinned.

The one you told me all about,

as if he were the punch line

of some joke beginning with

your mother, one of her several brothers.

He is the man your family mentions

in brevity, at the dinner table,

eyes rolling and lips pressing to smirks.

I wonder if your uncle got a wedding
invitation. The letter you did not send him,

not wondering how he branched so far--
You remind me of small-time slave holders.

Masters who could only afford a few

knew what they had was special:

clothed them, fed them, allowed them

the warmth of their homes, the warmth

in your home. My frequent visits 

to see you, peppered with moments

with your parents, watching cake shows

in your soccer shorts, cross-stitching.

One time, your mother told me, in high school,
one of her older brothers picketed blacks

from entering the school. She knew

it was wrong but these things were so natural,

so every day and somehow she knew,

seeing me, kissing you,

that maybe she wanted that
strangeness to be blocked out too. 

It’s only natural. No matter

the time spent baking cookies together,
picking scraps for quilts, nothing

so strange to deny their blue-eyed son
from dating a little black girl.

They say, the small slaveholders
loved the individual. It was the black

masses they feared and loathed,
like something strange. Some oddity,

some stirring conversation piece

like uncles out in Africa pursuing

black men in the Serengeti.
I imagine us, your uncle and I, sitting,
hovered up in the back corner of some

hardened pew, watching, chins up,

blurry-eyed and accepting,  being there

for your sister without ever needing

your permission or your invitation.