I
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I’ve seen
A toddler flinch on the elevator at an entering face, don’t
Touch, we are all trained in what not to see. Everywhere
In the world. I know an unnamed (forgotten, unspeakable) cemetery
Where the unwanted
Half-breed babies were swaddled tight and abandoned without funeral
Marker or blessing. What are you? A question black people
Never ask, perhaps, catching the drift of a slave ship
In my speech, most likely, what I laugh at
Or how I laugh, for the first laughter surely erupted from the deepest
Cavern, from Olduvai Gorge (praise Lucy who, in Ethiopia, is also known as Dinkinesh,
“You are marvelous” in the Amharic language).
Each wavelength of a chuckle is a measurable rift
Between the consciousness of those without and those with
Ownership of their bodies.
My ancestors, before there were lines
Of hatred and difference drawn around parcels
Of ground, landed on the circle of the beaches of the
Mediterranean, in Europe or Africa, so that my mother’s nose was
“Aquiline,” my skin color would find family
In any city. What makes me black?
That thin strip of DNA across
The middle of the continent that shuttled us to the Ivory Coast,
All our DNA is marked by it, the same
Red flag, the magic carpet-ride through Ghana
To the sea, no matter
Where the other dots on the map reside—Ireland, England, Finland—
No matter how far fetched, what makes me black is a splash of color
Through the map, a swath, a gash, an epoch of four hundred years
Of blood, semen, and vomit that poured out through Cape Coast,
and from that wound the bloody tears dispersed.
The Empress of the Death House
• • •
sleeping with mr. death
when you have hung the keys on the wall
& all you are left with is
mr. death
you untie his shoelaces
& roll him in
he is the shoulder you rub
on a cold night
he is the breath
you attend to
put your hand on his belly
& feel the stone bowels
he moves in the morning
measure the width
of his African nose
calculate the number of deaths
in his penis
you go down on him
he bursts in yr mouth
a thousand stars
flicker, then die
chalk-dry, mr. death
in the breeze from an open window
his bones
clatter like music
the story of a very broken lady
I.
the babies i have not been able to have
the slippery rubbery dolls
that have not been able to squeak through my thighs
i am splintery i guard me like glass
i am old as dry kindling
i go up like an attic
belching my black smoke & fire
i must have praise
i must have praise like Our Lady
a light
must fall
on the ton
in my belly
No little ones to crack through my pelvis.
No little ones to crack me in two.
in my mother i choked on the cord
the out-going breath
struggled & caught
my voice snapped like a neck
so i make no music
i am jealous of my time
i tire like an old lady
they take me to the top of the stairs
remove my white shift
& stroke between my legs
to get the clear urine.
i am thirsty i itch like a monk’s suit
II.
my house has become a secret
my children no longer speak to me
when i come home
they pass through me like ghosts
they are silent of comfort
they address me with the same respect
as dead ancestors
they turn away from me
like death in the future
i keep company under the hills
with scarves & with feathers
my O mouth for howling
nothing but crumbs & but slumber
my house is unfurnished
it is common as Howard Johnson’s
it is the outside i turn to
windows
framing the view
like a woman’s mahogany hair
nobody hears me
i talk & i talk
the walls close over me
my mother buries me
in the sound of her cooing
my father my doctor comes
bowing at my frightful pinkness
i am hot as pain
he keeps his hands off
he clucks like pigeons
he parades like fat roosters
he eats me like eggs
the bones of my tongue crack
on the roof of his mouth.
old troll lady,
old blankets & feathers
wave from my hole in the hill
wave my wild scarves
while the hole of my mouth
grows darker
& my speech is a sound
of no color
the mirror poems
Je vous livre le secret des secrets.
Les miroirs sont les portes par
lesquelles la Mort va et vient.
COCTEAU
Prologue:
If she could only break the glass—
the silver is already peeled back like first skin
leaving a thin
transparent thing that floats across the ground
in front of her : this white shadow.
1. what a mirror thinks
a mirror thinks it has no self
so it wants to be everything it sees
it also thinks everything is flat
put a bunch together
& they think they see
the back side of the moon
2. the mirror as a judge of character
keening my appetite
on the taste of an image of myself
sharpening myself
on bones;
suddenly
i lean over its eye
& see the way i see myself
i ask it
am i fairest in all the land
it opens like a backwards lake
& throws out of its center
a woman
combing her hair
with the fingers of the dead
3. the mirror & suicide
someday
stand before a mirror & feel
you are drowned
let your hair spread
as sweet Ophelia’s did
& you will rock
back & forth
gently
like a boat in kind water
4. questions to ask a mirror
remember:
whatever you ask a mirror
it will ask back
if you ask it
what will you give me
it will ask you
what will you give me
if you ask it what is love
it will turn into a telescope
& point at you
if you ask it what is hate
it will do the same thing
if you ask it what is truth
it will break in nine pieces
if you ask it what is beauty
it will cast no reflection
if you ask it to show you the world
> it will show you the eye of your mother
5. conversing with the mirror
never tell a mirror you are black
it will see you as a rainbow
never tell a mirror you are white
it will make you disappear
in fact a mirror doesn’t care
what color you are
never tell a mirror
how old you are
under 20
you draw a blank
over 40 it stares
never cry in front of a mirror
it gets cruel
if a mirror doesn’t trust you
it squints
if a mirror hates you
it speaks in a high-pitched voice
if a mirror calls you long distance
don’t accept the charges hang up
never run from a mirror
it always leaves a friend outside
never have sex with a mirror
you will have in-grown children
don’t take money from a mirror
there are strings
if you must converse with a mirror
say to it: you’re pretty
& won’t get broken
that gives you
7 years
6. the mirror & time
the mirror IS NOT immortal
in fact it only has nine lives:
the first one is a thief
the second a baker
the third plays the harpsichord
the fourth lives in the iron-bound
section of newark &
eats pork sausage
the fifth predictably drinks
the sixth goes into the convent
but the seventh (this gets better)
marries her father
& humps up like a camel
the eight cries a lot and ZAP
changes into a writer
7. the mirror & metamorphosis
the eye in the mirror is the mirror of the eye
8. the mirror & the new math
inside the mirror
opens up like the number zero
you swim around in there
bob up
or drown
like the rat in Wonderland’s flood.
your tail would like to hook a reason,
but you keep coming
face to face
breast to breast
with yourself.
you fall backwards & away, even
think that you are lost
in Oceanic O,
but you are still
pinned to an inverse.
9. the mirror as a silent partner
the mirror never talks
it is always astounded
with its O mouth open
& everything falling in
Epilogue:
Always straining toward her image, the girl
let go.
Tentacles of light
unlocked
like hooks of parasite
& she came back
in dark so dark,
she cannot see by sight
the face/as it must be/of love
i touch your nose
& what beneath
the flesh mat
thick & soft
the brain grey as goat’s curd
the kind cup of your skull
when will i break this mirror of your eye
in it
the moon
drags the water
on the shadow of its back
the earth
dims
like a jewel in darkness
& my face
hangs, starless
as dime-store crystal
doll poem
doll is sitting in a box
she watches me
with 2 grey eyes
i take the top off
& look at her
she is wearing rubbers
to keep her feet dry
she is wearing eyeglasses
2 inches thick
she has padding on her soft behind
she is wearing excuses
all over
she is carrying threads
& buttons
she is good hausfrau
prepared for all necessities
with kleenex
& kotex
& pencils
& lifesavers
& a boy doll with a wedding ring
she has lists as endless as dirt
a grocery list
a Xmas list
a wine list
a list of sins
a list of movies
a list of friends
her lists grow up
& eat lbs. of other lists
she is clean clean clean
she is rabbit quick
she copulates with ideas
she is good as gold
she is desirable as a tooth-fairy
she is the color of permanent
teeth
ask her her name
and turn her over
she says, ma ma
new lady godiva
she stops at the gas station
goes into the john &
unzips
her epidermis
peels out of it
skillfully
as a prostitute
long strips
slip to the pee-wet floor
& melt
like cotton candy
thus baptized
& pink as veal,
she goes to meet the public.
The Grandmother Poems
The Empress of the Death House
My mother, bastarded by southern
greed; the rammed, inseparable
seed dyeing her cells,
married north.
I recall the weekly
visits to my grandmother’s,
Webster’s Funeral Home,
where we courted a northern
mother who hadn’t yet put thumbs
up on any name but “Mrs. Webster.”
Wednesdays, pinafored, packed
in blue velvet leggings from Saks
Fifth, we pegged the snow-long
blocks of Detroit’s striving
colored Conant Gardens
to a last-ditch bus line
where we waited hours,
hopping back and forth on ice-
licked feet in a night of white
more blind than any other.
And sometimes, joking
about the red-striped mechanical
beast who slept remorseless
in his heated stall, we
turned and tunneled
home.
Though I was only five,
and mother never said a word,
I wondered why
my grandmother,
green-eyed, henna-haired,
Empress of the Death House,
never launched her ship,
the Fleetwood, laying course
for far off Conant Gardens
where these cold survivors,
her inheritors,
waited clench-jawed, brass-clean
to perform their weekly rabbit scene.
The Feeding
My grandmother
haunted the halls
above Webster’s Funeral
Home like a red-
gowned ghost. Til dawn
I’d see her spectral
form—henna-hair
blown back,
green eyes:
tameless.
She was proud.
Like God,
I swore I’d love her.
At night we whispered
how we hated mother
and wished that I could
live with her.
In the morning while she slept,
I’d pluck
costume diamonds
from a heart-shaped chest,
try her tortoise combs
and hairpins in my hair.
She’d wake
and take me to her bed.
Maroon-quilted, eider-downed,
I drowned.
Rocking on her wasted breast,
I’d hear her tell me
how she nursed my father
til he was old enough to ask.
Then she’d draw me
to her—ask me
if she still had milk.
Yes. I said, yes.
Feeding on the sapless
lie, even now
the taste of emptiness
weights my mouth.
The Funeral Parade
Over the Ambassador Bridge—
an arc of perpetual pregnancy—
we ride
to bury the dead.
Leading the way is one
blind, deaf, dumb:
the path has been cut,
we are doing our duty.
Grandfather,
in spats.
Grandmother,
tailor-made.
& the small child, the mourner,
blind as the buried.
from a group of poems thinking about Anne Sexton on the anniversary of her death
Look, you con man, make a living
out of your death.
HEMINGWAY
Questions for Anne
Did your poems write you like nightmares:
Did they play “shuffle-off-to-Buffalo” like the Ames Bros.:
Did they dry up like Whaleback Waddy:
One night, did you come home
to toast your toes in front of them
& did they leave you cold:
Did they leave you in the lurch
like a teenaged poppa:
Anne,
We are your children,
Where is the note, explaining. . . .
Answers from Anne
yes. my poems dreamed me like nightmares—
yes. they ended me like a cheap novel—
yes. they played music on my backbones. fish butchers.
i was their ankh, their xylophone
they owned me “Z” to “A”
THEY were the artist
i was the whore the canvas
i was ivory keys—
their beast of 5 fingers
but when the time came, nothing could stop me, i tell you:
i made a living of my death
unburying the bird
buried birds
are usually
dead.
fallen from the sky
because of too much
something.
too much high.
too much steep.
too much long.
too much deep.
but sometimes
one has been known
to go underground.
you do not hear a peep
for years.
then one day,
you go back to the spot
thinking you will not find
a feather or a few