the pangs-n-thangs of girlhood are foremost on my
agenda of items suppressed.
they storm the Barrier Reef of my consciousness
like shipwrecked
swabbies, drunk with trauma, washed inland to
a grimmer death
against the shore where rent flesh, first red,
turns salt white
Twentieth Century Nod-Out
nirvana-found prematurely, Who Me swung from
a knotty participle this morning, book bolted
from the inside, context sealed tight. homicide
detected little other than cookie crumbs, a week-old
bag of cracklings and a moldy POV. grounds stuck at
the bottom of a red coffee mug, ink-stained sheets,
sweat-soaked bandana and spittle-damp doobies
also quickly proved nowhere clues. the nosey dame
one-wall-over swears-by-jequirity she heard an
argument and tusslings punctuated by blood-curdling
howls which aroused indifference since howls
from Who Me recurred with piercing frequency
true mystery?
suicide uptown catty-waggers dare
cry others crosstown ’twas murder-so-fair
every minor breeze seems to whisper Chinese
coroner’s report reads demise by accidental
suspension from own plot device
Twentieth Century Nod-Out 2
gargantuan effort bags hurt-stained eyes,
heat-cracked teeth and back spasms at the overstress of a vowel. chaos
has settled in and made itself to home
a concerto of coughs & moans fortissimo—rood music for the cash bereft
as titans clash in the space of a Hollywood toilet,
whamming psyches into last week.
it’s another day of dancing at the holocaust
the same ol’ cold-blooded bloodlessness
enervating the unlucky the weak the poor—jes
another mundane bash to inspire upper-class yawns
the four horsemen have capped the fortune five-hundred
and the apocalypse is in the mail
Against Forgetting Cento
and the crows go by . . .
my teacher revealed a pattern
a black shaft loomed up inside me and grew bigger
as night grew
yet i leave this earth a lowly eater
without having tasted good meat
in this neutered air where mad Nijinskys swoon
in ambidextrous ennui
better to have never been born than to die ignored
mistress of slumber
white sleep
bloodfire (my breasts swollen and itchy
with his suckings)
America, i broil in the racism which makes
me who i am—just another dead voice
without a booking agent
i have learned how women fall to bone
how true women suffer what false men celebrate
these ravings in my ear come off the yap
of a faithless friend
in this dark time brave tongues are mute
in this field of cinders i am the smoke
my genius turned ferocity
i fall down on my knees and beg
my son’s terrible eyes
my son’s terrible eyes and sad cold hands
American Sonnet 25
today the villains are all named willie
with bushy wild hair which grows heedlessly
spewing discontent/a new breed
of resilient superlice disrespecting all borders
and infesting the puritan scalps
of bloody-handed dealers in cyclopean confusion
each death carried in blank eyes
(they taught us to accept the strangeness
of tolerance) someone discovers a mind
missing for over a decade
making note that all phone messages are from
neglected dunners irate over negligence
this compulsion to write one’s name
is a form of post-recession autoeroticism
as we undergo national ustulation
American Sonnet 88
looking back. no laugh yet
in this rage of ghostaxis 8c snuff erotica
can one art rescue another in decline?
(vis-à-vis hydrotherapy & long-term
flood survival: highjack it—one’s
only guarantee the ship will dock)
mayday. am trapped in a bag of false positives
on covert travels with self-circling airport
on cruise control. mayday. up to navel
in yellow-bellied lip service. mayday. under
attack by pink pearl erasers
madam. the light at the end of this tunnel
is a streamliner coming head-on
bring me
to where
my blood runs
American Sonnet 94
nostrum nostalgia my notes on never nada no
collect against my reluctance/forced tabulations
dey did dis, say me, and dat and dat dere
why have there been no arrests? no hearings? no justice?
(what is not offered cannot be refused)
i regress/the despoiled child, the deserted schoolyard
weeper. this is your execution
weeper. this is your groveling stone
weeper. yours is the burst & burnings of a city
stunned tearless in the uselessness of limp pursuit
breathlessness besets and brings the ass earthward
rest. the answer yellows and loses its wit, its crispness
my bed to make my heart to stake my soul to take
how i committed suicide: i revealed myself to you.
i trusted you. i forgot the color of my birth
American Sonnet 95
seized by wicked enchantment, i surrendered my song
as i fled for the stars, i saw an earthchild
in a distant hallway, crying out
to his mother, “please don’t go away
and leave us.” he was, i saw, my son. immediately,
i discontinued my flight
from here, i see the clocktower in a sweep of light,
framed by wild ivy. it pierces all nights to come
i haunt these chambers but they belong to cruel churchified insects.
among the books mine go unread, dust-covered.
i write about urban bleeders and breeders, but am
troubled because their tragedies echo mine.
at this moment i am sickened by the urge
to smash. my thighs present themselves
stillborn, misshapened wings within me
American Sonnet 98
intrados. myth-deep in tropical underbelly, he gives
erect hand the grunts the reaching the roar
ageless febrile greediness/endless penetrations
of her.
the comet blisters the sky yet disintegrates
monoliths crumble with each speaking, the talk
of orchids of rivers of songlessness of cold meat
she reclines on their bed/a catalogue of twistings.
doomed if not addicted, lost if not captured
she knows his hungers. her jade entanglements
her eyes-to-lips wisdom
that stone hidden in her mouth. rare jass
shaft-deep in she-warmth/those mythic givings (hers)
erect hard his grunts his reach into the abyss, his roar
living with you, he says, is like living with a Gauguin
Thiefheart
were i the queen of sleight of hand
i’d steal the wind from a thunderstorm
if i could
i’d steal the sweetness out of fresh-baked bread
it smells so good
i’d steal the stink from
the core of night
i’d steal the thrill in a thief’s delight
know i would
steal the wings off the flitting dove
the memory
of a brother’s love
i’d steal the t from the end of time
i’d steal the wolf of a nursery rhyme
i’d steal the dither from its troubled spin
i’d steal my mind from the brain its in
i’d steal the rose from the end of bloom
i’d steal my son from his cancer’s doom
i’d steal the corners from my frown
i’d steal your smile if it wasn’t nailed down
were i the queen of sleight of hand
i’d steal the poison from this muthaland
Blind Cassandra
ugly bird in solitary flight
whose nesting place will you steal tonight?
sorrow travels light travels fast travels
alone. her father’s gray eyes her mother’s
hurtful touch. a shrouded figure. from funeral
to funeral. begging memories, scavenging ghosts,
rooting up praise. gone along now. fingering
the heartcloth. scrapes ashes from the pyre of
her harpy tongue. Atones
ugly peahen doing a solo wingflap west
some birdbrain told you you could fly
slavery was indeed hard. living is precondition
for dying. spinning tops stop spinning. Picasso
could draw. chitterlings are delicious when
properly cleaned and cooked right
cross-eyed cornflake-yellow auspex of urban blather
barren/without decency’s spark
the only child you give birth to
is yourself and you squat to lay it
like an egg—out the wrong hole
Hornets
—after the song by Herbie Hancock
ghostlovers those old urges in furious forward
tongue & veiny hard-ons/stingers strokers
stumblebums—thunderjolts & madhens—all decisions
are wrong. two-thirds stomach/a will of its own.
pick a month, like January. lay out the days
a crazed calendar, a snowless chill. bad wind
you say? buzz it. oxygen-starved lungs which
have become scream-weakened. never-ending list
of rip-offs. it’s all fuckdaddies & parasites
roiling in the gutbucket/like breaded and fried
deep dish in Rex lard/a river of fat in which
gizzards, hushpuppies and thoughts are browned,
eyes wide as magnolia blossoms, limbs askew but
sinewy and glutted on touch dem thigh bones
potlikker laced with spit & Johnny Walker black,
ham-hock-sprouting mid bowl in butter beans.
you know you’re just a greedy so-and-so
working chain rhymes, stringing nostrums like beads
you say chapter & verse, “this is the way they do
it to you here.” zzzt. that which doesn’t sting
you stupid makes you cynical/bugged. but for the
light of it all, mean things winging in the green,
the swelling comes heavy, calm stifled in folds
of irritated jones-maddened meat. a dull buzz to the
quick then the marrow, capillaries bursting like
star orchids, an itchless rash webbing the skin
as if an acid burn, scars puffed at full rise
as big as confessions of attempted excellence.
roundness rages, bones in retreat, order rules on
its own as the abyss sets behind voluminous cheeks
major bloat signals the decline in bull to shoot—soft
tissue damage. cash cows belly up in lost focus, as you
practice the science of floating in one’s own waste.
Dream Song 811
—after John Berryman
Here. He contemplates a solitude
neither desired nor romantic, an uncourted dark
in which he finds himself becalmed,
his pen not the poison kind,
and a gun too messy and commonplace.
He’s not at all afraid, except that some idiot
might intrude and spoil that final discourse
between himself and his subtle bedeviler
as they merge in that mirror of a lake
all Christmas perfect in The Now
or shimmery in deep season’s change.
Then. This is the dark he lives in,
grading grimly clumsy theses, coveting
co-eds in their blush, cursing the artless
rituals by which he’s damned.
Wishing is a kind of dying and he has spent
his future crying in the drink
of his decline—an unnatural man.
Consciousness Raising Exercise
—after Elizabeth Bishop
Think of the tornado roaming the nation uneasily
like tall blond boys in black coats with semi-
automatics taking names in a high school library.
Think how they must look now, the rotted innocents,
thinking they were safe, slain before they had the chances
most take for comfort if not for granted,
whose families will forever mourn by the light
of their faiths or the fires of their estrangements.
Think of the paths walked to the crossroads,
the solemn pledges, the good done, the vows, the smiles
revealed in photograph albums and mementos—small
things kept to stay the flood.
It’s raining dirty water all over America. The hearths
of thousands are broken with countless fireplaces
cracked and gone to weed. The Arks are slowly filling
with unknown species and new breeds. What happened to
the brave? Have they departed with the free? Think of the
gutters crammed with souls gone needlessly to waste.
Think of hundreds seeping into history’s tar
as still as redwood or mounds of shoes; think
of them, deeply injured, as disturbances unresolved.
The Queen on Her Color
—after Borges, for Tessa Christensen
The useless savior finds me nailed to a rusty junk-
yard chassis, I have outlived the light.
Sightseers once came in proud waves: laughter rang
on the hilltops and multi-hued chatter
filled this basin with breathy desire.
Young days have a habit of quarrelsome gifts and
confusions, of promises half meant, half
kept, of finding joy in flawed self-revelations.
Days are like that, as if you didn’t know.
That blasphemy, that brightness, left dots before my
eyes and burnt off my lashes; a few respected
enemies to chat with, art for brains, and
stoked on freedom’s promise. The kind of
bulltripe & betrayal I’ve had a bellyful of
(wrote like a Nigger, got paid like a Mexican).
You know who I am in your bones and why you must hate me.
Words, thoughtless snipes, your cruelty; and you,
as icy a beauty as your Norwegian north. We
argued and I will never forget your words.
The sheltering night finds me stranded on a vacant lot
in the city of my dishonor & abuse.
Your smile is turned away, the sounds that compose
your name, a bizarre cacophony: these are
the broken memories you have left me.
I turn them over in the gravel, I lose them, I find
them; I feed them to stray cats who vomit up
fur balls and bits of gyrfalcon.
My dark rich life . . .
I must stain you, somehow. I must make en
chantments
from those broken memories you’ve left me. I want
your hidden envy, your bitter smile—that greedy
haunted regret your ugly mirror hoards.
2
What can I seduce you with?
I offer you alleyways, bitter sunrises, the
unapologetic blaze of urban hope.
I offer you the sweet darkness of a woman who has
looked too long into her lonely tarot
I offer you my slave ancestors, my beloved dead,
the beauty living men have dishonored in head-
lines: my father’s terror of being lynched
from the church steeples of Little Rock,
Arkansas, my maternal great grandmother’s
callused feet after her walk along the Trail
of Tears from Tennessee to Oklahoma territory,
my maternal grandfather’s miserly diggings
in the dead of history to hide his fortune
from his children, my cousin—just twenty-five—
found dead in the workplace, her heart having
stopped to leave her leaning over an indifferent
corporate accounts ledger.
I offer you whatever incites my blood, whatever
incurs my wrath or stirs my vision.
Wicked Enchantment Page 15
