American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

by Terrance Hayes

  ALSO BY TERRANCE HAYES

  How to Be Drawn

  Lighthead

  Wind in a Box

  Hip Logic

  Muscular Music

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © 2018 by Terrance Hayes

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Hayes, Terrance, author.

  American sonnets for my past and future assassin / Terrance Hayes.

  New York, New York : Penguin Books, 2018. | Series: Penguin poets

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017057838| ISBN 9780143133186 (paperback) | ISBN 9780525504962 (ebook)

  BISAC: POETRY / American / General. | POETRY / American / African

  American.

  LCC PS3558.A8378 A6 2018 | DDC 811/.54—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017057838

  Version_1

  CONTENTS

  Also by Terrance Hayes

  Title Page

  Copyright

  American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

  Sonnet Index

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  bring me

  to where

  my blood runs

  WANDA COLEMAN

  AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN

  The black poet would love to say his century began

  With Hughes or God forbid, Wheatley, but actually

  It began with all the poetry weirdos & worriers, warriors,

  Poetry whiners & winos falling from ship bows, sunset

  Bridges & windows. In a second I’ll tell you how little

  Writing rescues. My hunch is that Sylvia Plath was not

  Especially fun company. A drama queen, thin-skinned,

  And skittery, she thought her poems were ordinary.

  What do you call a visionary who does not recognize

  Her vision? Orpheus was alone when he invented writing.

  His manic drawing became a kind of writing when he sent

  His beloved a sketch of an eye with an X struck through it.

  He meant I am blind without you. She thought he meant

  I never want to see you again. It is possible he meant that, too.

  AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN

  Inside me is a black-eyed animal

  Bracing in a small stall. As if a bird

  Could grow without breaking its shell.

  As if the clatter of a thousand black

  Birds whipping in a storm could be held

  In a shell. Inside me is a huge black

  Bull balled small enough to fit inside

  The bead of a nipple ring. I mean to leave

  A record of my raptures. I was raised

  By a beautiful man. I loved his grasp of time.

  My mother shaped my grasp of space.

  Would you rather spend the rest of eternity

  With your wild wings bewildering a cage or

  With your four good feet stuck in a plot of dirt?

  AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN

  But there never was a black male hysteria

  Because a fret of white men drove you crazy

  Or a clutch of goons drove you through Money,

  Stole your money, paid you money, stole it again.

  There was a black male review for ladies night

  At the nightclub. There was a black male review

  By suits in the offices, the courts & waiting rooms.

  There was a black male review in the weight rooms

  Where coaches licked their whistles. Reviews,

  Once-overs, half-studies, misreads & night

  Mares looped the news. Your jolts & tears gained

  Rubberneckers, eyeballers & bawlers in Money,

  Mississippi. The stares you got were crazy,

  It’s true. But there never was a black male hysteria.

  AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN

  Why are you bugging me you stank minuscule husk

  Of musk, muster & deliberation crawling over reasons

  And possessions I have & have not touched?

  Should I fail in my insecticide, I pray for a black boy

  Who lifts you to a flame with bedeviled tweezers

  Until mercy rises & disappears. You are the size

  Of a stuttering drop of liquid—milk, machine oil

  Semen, blood. Yes, you funky stud, you are the jewel

  In the knob of an elegant butt plug, snug between

  Pleasure & disgust. You are the scent of rot at the heart

  Of love-making. The meat inside your exoskeleton

  Is as tender as Jesus. Neruda wrote of “a nipple

  Perfuming the earth.” Yes, you are an odor, an almost

  Imperceptible ode to death, a lousy, stinking stinkbug.

  AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN

  Probably twilight makes blackness dangerous

  Darkness. Probably all my encounters

  Are existential jambalaya. Which is to say,

  A nigga can survive. Something happened

  In Sanford, something happened in Ferguson

  And Brooklyn & Charleston, something happened

  In Chicago & Cleveland & Baltimore & happens

  Almost everywhere in this country every day.

  Probably someone is prey in all of our encounters.

  You won’t admit it. The names alive are like the names

  In graves. Probably twilight makes blackness

  Darkness. And a gate. Probably the dark blue skin

  Of a black man matches the dark blue skin

  Of his son the way one twilight matches another.

  AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN

  Are you not the color of this country’s current threat

  Advisory? And of pompoms at a school whose mascot

  Is the clementine? Color of the quartered cantaloupe

  Beside the tiers of easily bruised bananas cowering

  In towers of yellow skin? And of Caligula’s copper-toned

  Jabber-jaw jammed with grapes shaped like the eyeballs

  Of blind people? Light as a featherweight monarch,

  Viceroy, goldfish. Pomp & pumpkin pompadour,

  Are you not a flame of hollow Hellos & Hell Nos,

  A wild, tattered spirit versus what? Enemy to Foe of

  Those Opposed to Upholding the Laws Against What?

  I know your shade. You are the color of a sucker punch,

  The mix of flag blood & surprise blurring the eyes, a flare

  Of confusion, a contusion before it swells & darkens.

  AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN

  I lock you in an American sonnet that is part prison,

  Part panic closet, a li
ttle room in a house set aflame.

  I lock you in a form that is part music box, part meat

  Grinder to separate the song of the bird from the bone.

  I lock your persona in a dream-inducing sleeper hold

  While your better selves watch from the bleachers.

  I make you both gym & crow here. As the crow

  You undergo a beautiful catharsis trapped one night

  In the shadows of the gym. As the gym, the feel of crow-

  Shit dropping to your floors is not unlike the stars

  Falling from the pep rally posters on your walls.

  I make you a box of darkness with a bird in its heart.

  Voltas of acoustics, instinct & metaphor. It is not enough

  To love you. It is not enough to want you destroyed.

  AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN

  I pour a pinch of serious poison for you

  James Earl Ray Dylann Roof I pour a punch of piss

  For you George Zimmerman John Wilkes Booth

  Robert Chambliss Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr

  Bobby Frank Cherry Herman Frank Cash your name

  Is a gate opening upon another gate I pour a punch

  Of perils I pour a bunch of punches all over you

  I pour unmerciful panic into your river I damn you

  With the opposite of prayer Byron De La Beckwith

  Roy Bryant J. W. Milam Edgar Ray Killen Assassins

  Love trumps power or blood to trump power

  Beauty trumps power or blood to trump power

  Justice trumps power or blood to trump power

  The names alive are like the names in the graves

  AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN

  You don’t seem to want it, but you wanted it.

  You don’t seem to want it, but you won’t admit it.

  You don’t seem to want admittance.

  You don’t seem to want admission.

  You don’t seem to want it, but you haunt it.

  You don’t seem too haunted, but you haunted.

  You don’t seem to get it, but you got it.

  You don’t seem to care, but you care.

  You don’t seem to buy it, but you sell it.

  You don’t seem to want it, but you wanted it.

  You don’t seem to prey, but you prey,

  You don’t seem to pray but you full of prayers,

  You don’t seem to want it, but you wanted it.

  You don’t seem too haunted, but you haunted.

  AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN

  Aryans, Betty Crocker, Bettye LaVette,

  Blowfish, briar bushes, Bubbas, Buckras,

  Archie Bunkers, bullhorns, bullwhips, bullets,

  All cancers kill me, car crashes, cavemen, chakras,

  Crackers, discord, dissonance, doves, Elvis,

  Ghosts, the grim reaper herself, a heart attack

  While making love, hangmen, Hillbillies exist,

  Lillies, Martha Stewarts, Mayflower maniacs,

  Money grubbers, Gwen Brooks’ “The Mother,”

  (My mother’s bipolar as bacon), pancakes kill me,

  Phonies, dead roaches, big roaches & smaller

  Roaches, the sheepish, snakes, all seven seas,

  Snow avalanches, swansongs, sciatica, Killer

  Wasps, yee-haws, you, now & then, disease.

  AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN

  Even the most kindhearted white woman,

  Dragging herself through traffic with her nails

  On the wheel & her head in a chamber of black

  Modern American music may begin, almost

  Carelessly, to breathe n-words. Yes, even the most

  Bespectacled hallucination cruising the lanes

  Of America may find her tongue curls inward,

  Entangling her windpipe, her vents, toes & pedals

  When she drives alone. Even the most made up

  Layers of persona in a two- or four-door vehicle

  Sealed in a fountain of bass & black boys

  Chanting n-words may begin to chant inwardly

  Softly before she can catch herself. Of course,

  After that, what is inward, is absorbed.

  AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN

  Seven of the ten things I love in the face

  Of James Baldwin concern the spiritual

  Elasticity of his expressions. The sashay

  Between left & right eyebrow, for example.

  The crease between his eyes like a tuning

  Fork or furrow, like a riverbed branching

  Into tributaries like lines of rapturous sentences

  Searching for a period. The dimple in his chin

  Narrows & expands like a pupil. Most of all,

  I love all of his eyes. And those wrinkles

  The feel & color of wet driftwood in the mud

  Around those eyes. Mud is made of

  Simple rain & earth, the same baptismal

  Spills & hills of dirt James Baldwin is made of.

  AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN

  The earth of my nigga eyes are assassinated.

  The deep well of my nigga throat is assassinated.

  The tender bells of my nigga testicles are gone.

  You assassinate the sound of our bullshit & blissfulness.

  The bones managing the body’s business are cloaked

  Until you assassinate my nigga flesh. The skin is replaced

  By a cloak of fire. Sometimes it is river or rainwater

  That cloaks the bones. Sometimes we lie on the roadside

  In bushels of knotted roots, flowers & thorns until our body

  Is found. You assassinate the smell of my breath, which is like

  Smoke, milk, twilight itself. You assassinate my tongue

  Which is like the head of a turtle wearing my skull for a shell.

  You assassinate my lovely legs & the muscular hook of my cock.

  Still, I speak for the dead. You will never assassinate my ghosts.

  AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN

  I’m not sure how to hold my face when I dance:

  In an expression of determination or euphoria?

  And how should I look at my partner: in her eyes

  Or at her body? Should I mirror the rhythm of her hips,

  Or should I take the lead? I hear Jimi Hendrix

  Was also unsure in dance despite being beautiful

  And especially attuned. Most black people know this

  About him. He understood the rhythm of a delta

  Farmer on guitar in a juke joint circa 1933, as well

  As the rhythm of your standard bohemian on guitar

  In a New York apartment amid daydreams of jumping

  Through windows, ballads of footwork, Monk orchestras,

  Miles with strings. Whatever. I’m just saying,

  I don’t know how to hold myself when I dance. Do you?

  AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN

  We suppose Ms. Dickinson is like the abandoned

  Lover of Orpheus & too, that she loved to masturbate

  Whispering lonely dark blue lullabies to Death.

  Because Galway Kinnell writes of Saint Francis

  Whose touch made a sow ecstatic, consider

  How it would be to make every creature shudder

  In orgasm. If you got one of your paws on a black-

  Bird, you’d see the blackbird shift & shatter like

  A vessel of ink. If you brushed the ear of a stranger,

  Her jaw & eyes & fingers would
clench on a dark

  Blue feeling. If, like the bear in a deep image poem,

  You got a paw on a fish in a river, you would feel

  The fish convulse like the flesh flooded with blood

  And the dark blue crush of touching yourself to Death.

  AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN

  Probably, ghosts are allergic to us. Our uproarious

  Breathing & ruckus. Our eruptions, our disregard

  For dust. Small worlds unwhirl in the corners of our homes

  After death. Our warriors, weirdos, antiheroes, our sirs,

  Sires, our sighers, sidewinders & whiners, winos,

  And wonders become dust. I know a few of the dead.

  I remember my sister’s last hoorah. I remember

  The horror of her head on a pillow. For a long time

  The numbers were balanced. The number alive equal

  To the number in graves. After a very long time

  The bones become dust again & the dust

  After a long time becomes dirt & the dirt becomes soil

  And the soil becomes grain again. This bitter earth is a song

  Clogging the mouth before it is swallowed or spat out.

  AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN

  Maxine Waters, being of fire, being of sword

  Shaped like a silver tongue. Cauldron, siren,

  Black as tarnation, black as the consciousness

  Of a black president’s wife, black as his black tie

  Tuxedo beside his black wife in room after room

  Of whiteness. My grandmother’s name had water

  In it too, Water maker. I have wept listening

  To Aretha Franklin sing Precious Lord. I have placed

  My thumb on the tongue of a black woman

  With an unbreakable voice. I love your mouth,

  Flood gate, storm door, you are black as the gap

  In Baldwin’s teeth, you are black as a Baldwin speech.

  I love how your blackness leaves them in the dark.

  I love how even your sound-bite leaves a mark.