Wicked Enchantment

by Wanda Coleman

all selections read neruda

  while standing at the supermarket checkout stand

  i read tabloid headlines. one screams

  “man force-feeds wife neruda”

  (he tells me he is worried neruda is coming between us)

  note found in cantonese fortune cookie:

  neruda slept here

  Life as a Cartoon

  (you can’t use that phrase

  someone’s already made it fa-fa-fa-famous)

  ink peepo

  in the mean mean the hip white dress glove

  pens the life and times of a modern day female ink spot

  (communication via balloon is severely limiting)

  inky stinky kinky dinky

  panel 1: stick figure orating

  before throng of enthused listeners

  panel 2: stick figure pulled over to curb by

  cop and ticketed

  panel 3: 2 stick figures fucking

  furiously at motel

  panel 4: lone stick figure sprawled helplessly

  pinned to earth by giant dollar sign

  caption: the way to a stereotype’s soul is thru clichés

  drippin’ off da page

  panel 1: stick figure clinging desperately

  to tree limb in hurricane force wind

  panel 2: stick figure with huge heart with crack in it

  alone on a beach. tears jumping out knot of head

  panel 3: stick figure with bandage on heart

  standing in front of mirror

  panel 4: stick figure flattened in wake of

  steamroller

  caption: is there happiness after a nite of man wine & song?

  (who goes there? the slink? it doesn’t matter how many times

  i’m cut, i bleed ink)

  For Me When I Am Myself

  the enhanced storage of mother-fat

  ancestors subjected to long periods of

  deprivation

  the body adapted/the generic coding of

  racial survival—all dat buttah jigglin’ rhythmically

  breasts/earthen cups ends up, out towards

  (the mirror) aureolae the wet slick sea-brown of kelp

  nipple raised to tongue

  an essentially hairless desert plain

  passion’s eyes follow the horizon

  at the mouth of my Y one hundred tiny men stand

  in militant salute, fists high in the air

  skink os opens/patiently takes in satisfaction

  nearly the same size as the thang

  devouring it

  the intense red subject of censorship & social myths

  making revelations subversive acts (mingusing)

  anatomically other than. yielding looseness

  to hot hands. seldom subdued by clothing

  who needs the safety of night who finds comfort in the

  suggestion of the unexplored

  only love could want this body

  wanting guarantees love

  nasty words

  visitations/

  interaction with

  others

  leading to an

  essentially

  negative

  catharsis or

  exo-cannibalism

  (i married my first taste—a mistake coming from hunger, a

  discussion centering on the negative images of black females as

  prospective mates and the related issue of the availability of men-of-color beyond age twenty-five, balls intact)

  der die das die

  the car. the driver. sirens. done did do wrong

  juvi baby

  they will strap you down and take the idea by force

  handcuffed, you will not be allowed to nurse or nurture

  (what think tanks are for)

  whispers outside windows down alleys suggesting (i repeat)

  danger even in broad daylight

  gangs of shadow, some with toothpicks, a swagger

  and ear-splitting funk

  watts dreams of dim-lit dingy walkways (i repeat)

  dirt-laden drama, linoleum worn thru to floorboards

  and across the way the old honky whore gives it up

  to the local boy virgins (a first taste of white meat)

  all you have to do is be there

  be in trouble

  the wrong place

  quarter slots & computerized victims

  revenge and/or initiation killing aka “wasting”

  as in “i wasted a couple of mushrooms”

  as in video game parlance

  the granite white sleepwalk of urban boredom

  long blocks of squat stucco housing

  liquor lockers, pawnshops, the promise of early closings

  (fear sets curfew)

  skin scraped raw by the hasty removal of diamonds

  set in gold

  brown kinks matted and wet—a crown of thorns

  exactly (pete & repeat)

  not feeling

  but the complete lack of it

  sinew drawn break-tight at the jaw, neck, forearms

  legs set for running at

  a whiff of the law

  of course you’re guilty, you were born

  weren’t you?

  —when ah get to hebben gonna kick off mah shoes—

  the accent of broad proper bourgeois vs the broken lingo

  of defiant ones/ideological idiots (godfathaless)

  rampant romantic notions of nobly dying in the cause

  of leaving one’s mark (mere graffito to be

  whited over)

  resulting from industrial detumescence and subsequent withdrawal

  cool = the ability to maintain absolute equilibrium

  under extreme adversity

  hip = recognition of one’s disadvantage

  and intellectually compensating to the

  point of reversal or neutralization (at least)

  today i am uncool and unhip

  beneath the underdog

  i hate this space. i am sick of dust. i want clean beige

  walls. i

  want solid oak bookshelves. i want cush chairs. i want

  the cats

  running free in the garden. i want the rent paid months in

  advance. better yet, my own home. i want the old car

  cherried out.

  i want a real credit card

  who do i rob? (rerun rerun)

  my friend the suicide sends her key

  that i may drop by anytime

  night visits to the rich instead (hebben hebben)

  they want to know what neighborhood i live in

  who i am

  in their assertion of the digestibly universal

  they offer up a wrinkled sex, my

  power is in knowing i possess it

  with or without display

  those haints who cling to youth

  are their own hell

  sing the gospel of mobs and money barons

  can’t say it enuff loud enuff

  bellicose witness to crises on-going

  plunder & assassination

  spew forth testimony—preach

  how they scare. how they enslave

  yet negate even that minimal work-animal value

  a personal history:

  papa left Little Rock when buck hunting

  season started. one was guilty just being there

  just being black being male

  he knew his temperament

  and saw himself hung in the sad young

  man strung up in front of the church

  as warning to the uppity

  promise to the niggerish

  his aunt had sent fifteen dollars

  for train fare to Chicago, maybe, but

  that afternoon he saw a car with

  California license plates

  and made Los Angeles in time to catch

  the earthquake of ’33

  mama took the train out of Hennes
sey

  domestic jobs opened out west

  during the war. white men were

  answering the call. their women took

  their places in factories and

  boardrooms. black hands were needed to

  cook clean clothe and feed the young

  she worked for the movie star

  Ronald Reagan and his wife Jane

  but quit after a year because they

  refused her a raise

  and she didn’t like it the time

  Lou Costello got drunk and

  chased her around the kitchen table

  they met in me and another three

  •

  dear one,

  expect this letter to go unmailed as have all the others. i

  can’t bring myself to send them. i should never write when

  angry or depressed. my words seem to overwhelm whomever

  i write to at the time. i need to write it, so i do, and

  tear it up afterwards and go on about my usual struggle

  as best i can. writing an exorcism blah blah blah. i imagine

  my letter read. and even though it isn’t, i feel better

  having written, as though it were read and

  understood. going thru the process

  i’m not good at explaining how i

  feel. i have

  run out of synonyms for rage

  there are preconceived notions in which i feel trapped

  i keep thinking my work will liberate me from them

  it hasn’t

  as though life’s language is its own snare

  so by not sending

  these letters i escape entrapment

  you dig?

  ever so sincerely—

  •

  regionality = living room

  i am, at last, content to leave

  the place i’ve never been

  knowing i will never get there

  gonna kick off my blues

  hostile love

  he shuffles the deck expertly. he offers a cut

  as if i had a choice. i pass. what difference

  can i make? the sonofabitch has memorized the position

  of every bloody card. i play the game, my heart jittering,

  fiercely stubborn against my calculated loss (karma? please)

  he smiles as he goes down “the winner”

  then coos, “congratulate me”

  then tempts me to murder, his mouth twisted in

  you act so niggerish. there i go there i go there

  i go smashing things glasses shattered wine spilled plates

  dashed to the restaurant floor. i rush out into the tony

  night to walk it off. waves of crises (for the worse) as his

  eyes follow with U-boat acuity

  how can he disrespect the millions

  whose dying gave us ourselves

  no forgetting no forgiving

  (cooling out my crazed and exploded flesh)

  i go for a reading. the gypsy is tipsy

  tells me she needn’t fear work. she got enuff moolah

  to coast five years and there’s always her mama’s mansion

  in the right white part of town. as for my future? i

  shouldn’t bank on it

  not forgotten not forgiven

  the dark heart slum effluent

  emetic for the bile of spirit

  the dark heart broken, spreading

  plague. a need-fever (springing from the cavity

  of greed. the seat of the great gold-toothed mouth

  yawning—its own void/emptiness)

  the gotten the given

  an eeling pain sharp then diffuse

  thru gristle then meat

  corkscrewing

  the dark heart/earth casts up its dead

  breathes

  the exalted spasm

  [my pearl to his tongue

  he imprisons/keeps me in its pleasure

  throbs moving thru me

  his eyes tasting for my sweetening signaling

  tabes dorsalis/meltdown]

  memory: paper warped by the humidity of

  pressed flesh

  forgiven not forgotten

  we rain in each other/darkness parts

  sighing smiling he withdraws from me night after

  year after

  grabbing tissues to catch our excessive moistures

  then

  he sits at my side, at the edge of our

  storm-wrecked bed

  i watch him watch me

  (the better) in hazy after-sex

  one maverick wisp of hair dangles free at his

  sweaty brow, his head tilted slightly

  eyes stroking mine in luminous night

  as i

  grope thru my surrender

  for some bit of juju

  to hold us here, now

  just like this

  American Sonnet 9

  love people use things

  later a possible emergence as

  effortless forms of illumination drift

  across the screen of the set/swaying bodies

  converging/ghosts of divisions

  city after city. oh ruthless decay

  — these skin disruptions —

  the sport of confession for pay

  (loose shoes, tight pussy, warm place to shit)

  splendid moments when all visions of ghosts/

  convergences/bodies swaying adrift

  illuminating new behavioral norms

  effortless emergence? possibly. later

  use people love things

  Gone But Not Forgotten

  gone real gone the good die gone

  strange and distant banging wakes me from reverie

  my bed is cold. i am cold but deep long sleep

  is good for me

  it’s time for song when going gets gone

  i hear voices sing and shout, hear bodies

  move anxiously about. i hear the

  diggings of an eager race for whom i’ve

  disappeared without a trace

  grieving of the gone goes on and on

  and now they’ve rediscovered me. want to make use

  of me. overturn all my stones. make a science

  of my bones. my past once ignored in ignominy, they

  now wish a future built on me

  there is no such thing as coming back

  such a strange sensation—the living

  at my grave dying to get in

  Dream 1319

  i am in my father’s house

  it is made entirely of fine cedar, unfurnished

  the floors fairly clean but in corners

  dust and bits of stuff indicate

  premises vacated mere hours before

  i go upstairs to the second floor and stand

  mid-room. it is large with high ceiling

  suddenly i see a movement

  something rolls or crawls across the floor

  set in a golden glow

  at first look it is a scarab. no. a gold coin

  i go down on hands and knees. closer it is one of

  Pop’s old roller erasers the kind mounted on a miniature

  whisk to brush away the tiny pilings. it’s gold instead of

  the gray i remember as a child. even the dried

  rubber cement which cakes it is gold

  but as it rolls

  the pilings form a giant cursive “G” then

  it rolls towards me. and with it comes a cold

  i let the cold come over me expecting it to pass

  but it lingers and the eraser spins mid-floor as

  i feel myself taken into extreme cold bone cold then

  deeper. and i know

  and i tell myself smartly

  “you’d better wake up”

  i do so at once

  Soul Eyes

  —after Coltrane

  like twin hearts beating in amber


  (flesh) the smoke of a caress rising and

  risings/like soaring his entering my secret

  solitude where night fighters prowl the terrain

  like oboes tickling my ears drawing me into

  reverie the lingering tingle of his stubble to

  my cheek loving the mist reminiscent of his

  recent evaporation like cool desert sand sifting

  thru my toes his skin again taunting/begs

  me for enfoldment/seducing me into amnesia

  like hands softly rhythming on gone congas

  summoning groin pulsations/lifting me

  by invisible tongues beyond fear latitudes

  like sent like received

  Nocturne

  running in place

  my tongue has grown strong and hard

  my pace is steadier my step surer

  measured as circles move around me and define

  this frayed self the center of at least one stubborn

  cosmos

  here i sweat the days

  humming because rhythm makes persistence possible

  occasionally breaking into song-and-dance