Wicked Enchantment

by Wanda Coleman

  hoop earrings nearly big as her head.

  Panel 1: He takes a giant butcher’s knife and splits

  the cake down the middle.

  Panel 2: Santa pushes her cake half in front of

  MIZ stick figure, whose heart jumps out of

  her chest with joy and relief.

  Caption: After centuries of slavery, servitude, share-

  cropping, poverty and privation, you Blacks

  have earned your share of America at last.

  Panel 3: Big lick of icing missing. Santa sucks glob

  from his forefinger, having sampled her side

  of the cake. MIZ stick figure licks her lips.

  Caption: Ummmmm. Tastes gooood. You’ll love it.

  Panel 4: Stick figure draped in mantilla appears at

  table as Santa lowers the knife, cuts MIZ half

  into fourths.

  Caption: BUT—of course we don’t want to forget Maria,

  over here, who’s scrubbed my floors for years.

  Panel 5: A stick figure in coolie hat and another with

  giant feather on knot of head appear. MIZ-half of

  the cake is cut into eighths.

  Caption: And we certainly can’t forget Asia and Cherokee!

  Tri-Panels 6 through 8: MIZ stick figure surrounded by

  clamoring throng of various other stick figures.

  The knife in rapid swing as Santa, suit shirt

  sleeves rolled back to his elbows, furiously

  chops away at MIZ-half of cake

  Insert: Close on MIZ stick figure in sweaty daze as

  question marks snake-dance above her kink head.

  Caption: We are a nation of ignoramuses!

  Panel 9: All the others have taken their share of cake and

  skedaddled. Confused, MIZ stick figure bug-eyes

  CRUMB which is all that’s left of her cake half.

  Santa has ALL of his half.

  Caption: Racism has ended. I gave you all YOU deserve

  and all you’re gonna get. Happy days are here

  again!!! Hohohohoho.

  I Ain’t Yo Earthmama

  boogers are not my forte

  my sky is painted to look like a ceiling

  when under it, i wear a raincoat for

  protection from acid tears

  some of my islands are imaginary, some composed of rock

  fallen from the cliffs above to create

  this unstable terrain. i am all fire, ash

  and water as far as the gypsy sees—water largely

  those who have sunk complain in their fleshlessness

  rankled, they rile against the chill of fathoms

  where is Poseidon when you need him? off somewheres

  and leaving you to Hades

  who knows where the stats end and the i begins?

  (speaking of the untrained lover of iambs

  so-and-so may not be able to distinguish the difference

  between bad sex experimental sex or the perverse.

  often questions of orality take on an unnecessary complexity.

  how does one shape the tongue or apply the tongue

  where at what precise moment of excitement. to stimulate

  discourse, truncate or conclude?)

  everything i vomit is used against me

  to squeak. perchance to scream

  to yield—to take coffee with one’s crème

  all smooches are accidental

  and cut my lips. what smiles come, when they come,

  come bloody. i suffer bouts of bra fever

  my nipples peel and flake as if savaged by lovers

  should you have only one life,

  live it as a taboo

  cold duck and a hot bath queer the urge

  for an all-nite doctor with an all-nite pill.

  when i manage enough equanimity to approach

  sleep, i sack out in a bed of tongues

  (mantra: it’s better than the streets)

  what does not materialize melts into

  banal jealousies, stymied ambitions first fire

  then rot stomach throat & good sense.

  ’twixt my big toes, a pool of snot

  his sticky lies bloop to the surface. i go for the squish.

  wet feet and mucked-up ankles

  once a spook always a spook

  (on those solitary walks in paths of fire

  the old woman picked up perfect stones found along

  the side of the road, near the bank, filled her pockets

  and, later, used them to violate the plate glass windows of

  upscale boutiques in the dark dawn of the big sale)

  endless rumors of unification & justice

  require us to live with suppressed histories

  and broken treaties, our losses tallied in

  the bones of our malnourished children

  he spirits off

  my blood-stained confidence

  to orchestrate the laughter of

  his friends

  while in my bush he lies as trust’s

  last virgin dies

  art’s traitor licks my thighs

  with snickers in his eyes

  there’s a solid rap on the door. a beat

  and then it opens.

  modest expectation is met

  with epithets fists squawks

  i have been stuck

  in the infernal mud of the same river twice

  water as far as the gypsy swims,

  this unstable terrain is all fire fallen

  from sky to create islands of imaginary rock

  shush shush shush

  deary dear dear put yo head down here

  and after i’ve burnt it off

  we can relax in the cool thereafter

  Pseudo Dickinsonian Cento Blues

  to some extent

  consider the history of a person

  the approaches discussed so far

  for instance cannot always be taken to refer literally

  every blossom on her bush

  adjusts its humbled head

  to take the ride within her stride

  the resonance of lead

  no one would deny that value, but it is not the only value

  altho we have seen, it is sometimes argued

  personal reference may creep in

  although it is sometimes said that

  it would be a mistake to think

  she laps the miles to see its likes

  and up the valley licks

  what assumptions are implicit?

  we could generalize further

  this is a troublesome matter

  several patterns of organization are possible

  with broken rabbit ears

  and in a soundful throe

  pop the corn and ice the beers

  and in a snit of woe

  let us listen to it mow

  the same ol’ changes

  bad money bad love scuttle bugs & cracked ceilings

  I Ain’t Yo Earthmama 2

  pardon me, but you’re standing on my stomach

  those aren’t grapefruit you’re squeezing

  and certainly not papaya

  and niggahplease! don’t you dare speak of coconuts

  if you must insist that this is a gold rush,

  there are planes leaving hourly for South Africa & the Yukon

  there’s nothing beneath this sternum but

  blood vessels rib bone & a significant muscular organ

  which gives off no feelings unless malfunctioning

  and when

  you get tired of syphoning off my sweetwater

  and pillaging my salt lakes maybe we might discuss

  conservation and recycling

  until then

  i suggest adventure be omitted from the equation

  this ain’t the jungle, jim

  so quit stickin’ your tarzan in my jane

  Letter to My Older Sister 4


  dear Georgiana,

  i’m sorry i haven’t written till now

  but i’m terribly embroiled

  and i’m having these headaches caused by grinding

  my teeth in my sleep. plus all the bullsquat

  as usual. i want so much to be involved

  in worthy causes, but i can barely manage to

  keep the hand to the mouth.

  i hate disappointing friends & potential

  friends. i haven’t had a party in years. i owe

  scads of people invitations and am unable

  to return them. it’s very hard

  to put one thought in front of the other.

  i had to force myself to work tonight. a hissy fit

  overcame me. i toughed through it. i’m here

  by myself. i hated to pick up the phone.

  who would i call? who wants to hear it? who

  has the time? who isn’t burnt out?

  so i worked worked worked till the furious

  tears dried up. i kept remembering

  that scene in A Streetcar Named Desire—you

  know the one?—where Blanche DuBois

  is about to be taken away and

  flutters against the dinginess of that dirty

  window like a moth trapped in a mad gleam.

  that scene plays over and over

  in what’s left of my mind.

  o sis, i work and i work and take

  aspirin for the headache and drink coffee to

  fight off drowsiness and take a bite of

  something sweet for the sugar rush.

  i still believe in myself. and i want to do

  my best to honor those, like yourself,

  who no longer have the privilege of work

  yes. it is getting late. i’ll close. i hope you

  don’t resent my sharing this sort

  of stuff with you. but

  you know how it is with Mother. . . .

  Zed Chronology

  june the starlings have eaten the cat

  june rereading Trilce

  june psychic snow fell last night,

  an outside transmission. an old

  passion was cloaked in a new

  philosophy

  june agate eyes were found under the pillow.

  slow to warm

  june the exhausted controversy refuses resolution

  june when i went to rake up the disgusting

  fur ball, i found a dead baby possum

  june my eyes hurt

  june the interloper is leaving shit

  all over my life

  june spent the evening talking to the walls.

  nobody showed, not even my guest list.

  june watched Gilda one hundred and sixty-five times

  june they say i should forgive America, but

  they’re the ones hiding behind

  bulletproof glass

  june the squirrels have eaten the plumber

  Essay on Language 6

  dear Greenie,

  there are those who have no passion but who

  are sensitive enough to sense the void within

  and therefore must imagine passion. i often find

  that among that kind, there are those who

  detest the truly passionate out of an envious rage

  that has always faced us passionate ones. ever will

  a man who is jailed for his passion gone awry

  arouses in his kindred a simple but deep

  compassion. for we, too, reside in our own inward

  jails built of the conflicts passion inspires

  we clang at our bars in silence, out of public view

  like Paul said, you can’t judge the depth

  of a man’s passion by looking into his eyes. it comes

  on the aura of the skin, resides on the throne

  of presence, crackles on his breath

  as with a woman as in a woman’s heart-eye

  likewise is the display in a spectrum of tones

  and not merely the cliché of purple

  (sort of gives new context to one-eyed purple

  people-eaters, doesn’t it?)

  it has always struck me funny,

  that often the least passionate people are poets,

  contrary to myth. perhaps it’s a case

  of the poet giving all there is of passion

  to the verse leaving those who hunger

  outside it sucking up air

  i’ve certainly been a witness to

  the kind of passionless entity who must create

  chaos out of calm

  and thence extract the passion

  from the moment with the forceps

  of their ravenous intellect—prodding, pulling

  and causing everything delicate to bleed

  giving no consequence to damage. because now

  they have the passion from which to shape the poem

  i’m sure you’re familiar with that kind of psyche

  i so in your retreat, consider—those drawn to

  Just Plain God-awful Poetry are not only drawn to it

  out of ignorance, but to the pools of unskillfully

  spilled passion they find brimming in the tongue

  they are distance-sick, made ill by the world

  in which violent passions are subsumed/made perverse/

  outlawed. they are made ill by the word turned in on itself

  as constraint against release/dangerous abandon

  i am always struck by the “safe” poetry

  the most bloodless, banal crap i’ve ever had

  the misfortune to read assembled out of the

  need for foundation money, the fear of risk,

  the need to be free of dolor, to create,

  these pathetic versifiers have drained all

  passion from their words—the lustful

  or the didactic—lest they be rejected. or

  in peripheral ways, oblique and skewed.

  one is forced to plow through reams

  of coming-of-age musings and death-dying

  musings and musings mundane and stale.

  reams and reams of the cutesy-wootsy

  the wootsy-pootsy and the gamesteristic

  so that by the end of the process one is dying

  to pick up a page of Jeffers, Kaufman or Poe

  Keats for Kkkkristsakes

  go to a movie—anything to get

  neck-deep in some goodlikkity trash

  because that’s where the passion

  is dicking around fresh and alive and

  delivered on a paper plate seeping grease

  yet honest in its salty pleasure

  hot baloney and American cheese

  that’s why i find it so difficult to critique

  poetry. i realize that passion seeks its own heat

  so to speak. and that the bardic bad serves in its way

  as well as the good. E. B. Browning or Edna St. V

  then, Greenie,

  there are those like me besotted with passion

  when touched lightly passion oozes

  to the skin’s surface and runs earthward

  passion leaks from ears eyes mouth gummy with passion

  crusting at the lips clothes passion-stained and

  unwashable passion in every step and gesture pashzuhn

  overcome and overwhelmed and sickened by and

  with it. passion. and desperate for the soul-letting

  given no consequence

  Letter to My Older Sister 5

  dear Georgiana,

  trying to do something to shake off this

  post holiday boohoohoo.

  as you know, i’ve been poking at baby sis again.

  she looks like

  strawberry shortcake, but watch the hardtack

  underneath. it’ll

  crack your teeth. it would be victory over

  raging hearts

  should we manag
e to become friends. but that’s

  going to take more

  vital stuff than i have to bleed. put that on hold.

  besieged and collapsing under the weight

  of my gift. love

  as i live it seems more like Mercurochrome

  than anything else

  i can conjure up. it looks so pretty and red,

  and smells of a balmy

  coolness when you uncap the little applicator.

  but swab it on an

  open sore and you nearly die under the stabbing

  burn. recovery

  leaves a vague tenderness and an India ink-red

  splotch that’ll

  vanish between one scrubbing or another

  Mama’s favorite lipstick used to be a sultry

  red violet

  that segued into the hue of sangria when

  applied to her

  full rose-brown lips. i liked watching her

  slick moves as

  she studied her face over the dressing

  table mirror, but

  best was how she briskly slipped it

  from her purse

  while sitting in the car, cupping her compact

  in one palm while

  she uncapped the tube with a flick. One twist

  of the brass

  canister’s butt, and the stick rose for duty