Poems After Amy Sherald, by Christopher Leigh Silverberg

American Sublime

I could spend the whole day in your company
til my skin went grayscale and my colours
blossomed: pale green pants gone garden, brown 
in my almost-black coat clear as stalwart trees.
Could, but, JaQuay is waiting—been an hour
since he peeped our exalted cousins. Me,
I just keep digging sisters, unburying brothers birth
themselves in me beneath your painter’s eye.
So I go, run down to the museum store, buy 
your art book, your American Sublime 
in reproduction, hope the fam comes through
book ink as in your paint. The circuit closes,
opens, flexes: ghosts have made a world
through you. I press my ear to the golden gate.

**

Pilgrimage of the Chameleon

https://www.moniquemeloche.com/artworks/12969-amy-sherald-pilgrimage-of-the-chameleon-2016/

I went to Amy Sherald for my birthday 
(second time, in Baltimore) and here
you are to greet me with balloons! I hear
happy birthday sparkling off your lips!
Bet you happy birthday anybody 
any day, even if it’s not their birthday,
bet it’s anybody’s birthday if it hides 
the blues we hide with half smiles, huh? Two-man,
where you headed? When is moving inside
your eyes? Some sad unbirthday? Absent
somelove in your boyheart? What was it?
What, tell me what you tried to tell me
back in Baltimore! I almost heard you, then
you shrugged on your smile, held out balloons.

**

All Things Bright and Beautiful

https://www.instagram.com/p/C36JiO4s7CN/

Mister, why you looking at me so much? You missing
your daughter? Done looked enough to see right through me.
That’s okay. I see right through you too. I’m not
bragging, just, I watch better than most. The sun
gets in my eyes, but my eyes can hide the sun. Hearts
and flowers decorate my dress. I can see folks’ hearts 
in flower colors, doing flower things. Like what?
like flower things! you know what flowers do,
wilt and sprout and bloom… I’m gone learn the world 
real good, before I say a single secret. I’ma steep
the world inside of me like tea. I’m gone be 
a strong brew, if I ever tell. I might not ever tell. Ghost 
who haunts our gallery? Go on what you do.
Just know: I see you. Don’t you tell no lies on us.

**

For Love, and For Country

https://www.artbook.com/blog-amy-sherald-love-and-country.html

I loved my sweet sailor before I knew his name,
I swooned for him and then he caught my swoon! 
Y’all don’t even know what color his eyes are!
Y’all never held his stripes! Y’all never kissed his cross!
I tell you they don’t tell you what love is like,
not really. They can paint you a picture. But on the inside, 
where you’re full of pictures, they can’t paint you that, 
the way it swells like shoutin at the head of a holler. How 
you holler like a song running to him, then you swell
until no banks can hold you nor no plains no valleys nor
no mountains, you burst!     til you’re an ocean. And a kiss,
a lil ole painting of a kiss supposed to tell you all that?
Well, even if you only get a sniff of how I love him,
that oughta hold you     til you get one of your own! 

**
​
Well-Prepared and Maladjusted

https://nmwa.org/blog/artist-spotlight/close-encounter-well-prepared-and-maladjusted/

What did it cost her to buy our respect? My mother 
is an actress. I imagine all the women 
in this gallery portrayed by her 
(I wedge myself in all the men’s clean coats). 
But this one—breakthrough!—this painting,
this freedom song in itchy and uncomfortable
unfreedom—she’s the one I see my mother most
delighting to portray. To get inside her head,
to feel, as an actor feels, the starchy collar
right below her ears, itching, the pink and polka
-dotted, how it wants to climb its way into her
smile, but can’t, and so, though beautiful, she is not
poised. Hey mom, when you get the mystery of this woman,
tell me in my ear, please? Should I tell the world?

Christopher Leigh Silverberg

Christopher Leigh Silverberg is a Black, queer, theatre-native, church-fluent poet of film experience. His work appears or is forthcoming in Callaloo, ANMLY, and Memezine. He is grateful to his teachers at Hunter College, Columbia University, and Cave Canem. He is currently at work writing sonnets after Amy Sherald, a poem for every song in Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life, and spells to unweave the wolf. Christophersilverberg.com.