Cleveland Poetry Spotlight: "Good Friday" by Ray McNiece

Good Friday 

Wildwood’s granite jetty juts
into fog walled Lake Erie
waves lapping invisibly through
sibilant mist and fat plops
on Donegal tweed cap
worn to honor ancestors
who gathered on Cleveland’s shores.

This purgatorial soundscape
for Good Friday’s gloom,
called “soft weather” along Antrim’s coast
where Cailleach cries
her shroud of drizzle
over the Slovenian babushka
doddering down Lake Shore boulevard
pushing her rusty shopping cart.

Both sides of my people merged
here, got stuck here,
their blood, piss and spit
running down to this shore
amid tough weeds and cracked
brick landfill of Collinwood blocks.
Sooty snow piles that just won’t melt
are my birthright, soaking
sodden foot bones,
fly ash filling lungs.

The vesper bells from St. Mary’s, tamped
by rain, call through gathering dusk.
After mass, after gazing upon
Mary’s Assumption over the altar,
her blue gown trailing behind
beatific face sunward,
there will be a perch fry,
and Carlings’ beer, and,
with water from the Lake,
soup, the dumplings
like drowned suns.

About the Author:

Along with his work fronting Tongue In Groove, a local jam band, Ray McNiece regularly shares his poetry around town and hosts “Poem for Cleveland” workshops. Named Cleveland Heights' poet laureate, McNiece earned the Cleveland Arts Prize's lifetime achievement award in 2021. Find more information about his work at raymcniece.com and read our chat with him below:

Cleveland Magazine: What is your background with poetry?
Ray McNiece: I didn’t go the academic route. I’m the first male to graduate college in the history of my families, either side. So, you’ll see some of that in "Good Friday." I come out of the working class. That’s probably pretty common for a lot of Cleveland.

CM: What is the value in relating to the city’s past through poetry?
RM: Poetry, plus history, equals honesty. It’s important, I think, to know where you come from [in order] to know where you’re going. And to kind of celebrate that but also understand that we need to overcome our tribalism. 

CM: Can you tell us a bit about Cleveland’s
history with the art form?
RM: This is a great poetic tradition we have here, and people have carried that. Hart Crane who lived here in Cleveland. The other giant we have, of course, is Langston Hughes. And Langston Hughes was really instrumental in the Harlem Renaissance. I think to Langston Hughes because he wrote more accessible poetry; was the guy that was sitting on the stoop and had his ears open to the rhythms of the street, the rhythms of the speech, of the everyday people.