Take a bullet. Break through
Concrete. The sidewalk.
The street someone crosses
When he sees wilderness where
He wanted his city. His cross-
Tie. His telephone pole.
Timber. Timbre. It’s an awful
Sound, and people pay to hear
It. People say bad things about
Me, though they don’t know
My name. I have a name.
A stake. I settle. Dig. Die.
Go underground. Tunnel
The ocean floor. Root. Shoot
Up like a thought someone
Planted. Someone planted
An idea of me. A lie. A lawn
Jockey. The myth of a wooded
Hamlet in America, a thicket,
Hell, a patch of sunlit grass
Where any one of us bursts into
One someone as whole as we.
Layover
Dallas is so
Far away
Even for the people
Who live
In Dallas a hub
Through which we get
To smaller places
That lurch
And hurt going
Home means stopping
In Dallas and all are
From little
Towns and farms
If all keep
Heading back
Far enough pay
Attention keep
Your belongings
Near everyone
In Dallas is
Still driving
At 3:24 a.m.
Off I-20 where
I was raped
Though no one
Would call it
That he was
Hovering by
The time
I understood
He thought it necessary
To leave me with knowledge
I can be
Hated I was
Smaller then
One road went
Through me
No airport
I drove
Him home
A wreck
On the freeway
We sat
In traffic
My wallet
On the seat
In between
My legs
III
Duplex
I begin with love, hoping to end there.
I don’t want to leave a messy corpse.
I don’t want to leave a messy corpse
Full of medicines that turn in the sun.
Some of my medicines turn in the sun.
Some of us don’t need hell to be good.
Those who need most, need hell to be good.
What are the symptoms of your sickness?
Here is one symptom of my sickness:
Men who love me are men who miss me.
Men who leave me are men who miss me
In the dream where I am an island.
In the dream where I am an island,
I grow green with hope. I’d like to end there.
Of My Fury
I love a man I know could die
And not by way of illness
And not by his own hand
But because of the color of that hand and all
His flawless skin. One joy in it is
Understanding he can hurt me
But won’t. I thought by now I’d be unhappy
Unconscious next to the same lover
So many nights in a row. He readies
For bed right on the other side
Of my fury, but first, I make a braid of us.
I don’t sleep until I get what I want.
After Essex Hemphill
The night is the night. So
Say the stars that light us
As we kneel illegal and
Illegal like Malcolm X.
This is his park, this part
Of the capital where we
Say please with our mouths
Full of each other, no one
Hungry as me against this
Tree. This tree, if we push
Too hard, will fall. But if
I don’t push at all, call me
A sissy. Somebody ahead
Of me seeded the fruit-
Bearing forest. The night
Is my right. Shouldn’t I
Eat? Shouldn’t I repeat,
It was good, like God?
Stay
It was restful, learning nothing necessary.
Gwendolyn Brooks
All day, I kept still just to think of it—
Your body above mine, what was
A lack of air between us—hot but restful
As I sat center on my bed of learning,
Mouth open, touching nothing,
My memory the only noise necessary.
A.D.
Each wounds you badly, but no boy hurts
Like the first one
When you slept in a bed
Too narrow for two. You thought he disappeared
In the sheet and cushion,
But look at you now, twenty-eight in a king, you wake
With a man on your mind— Head
On your chest, both of you bent
As best you can to make
Room for the other.
Ten years, your feet hanging, tangled and long, and still
You’re the victim
Of such nightmares. You breathe
Like he’s been lying
On top for the last decade.
A man goes to heaven, you suffocate below the weight.
Turn You Over
All my anxiety is separation anxiety.
I want to believe you are here with me,
But the bed is bigger and the trash
Overflows. Someone righteous should
Take out my garbage. I am so many odd
And enviable things. Righteous is not
One of them. I’d rather a man to avoid
Than a man to imagine in a realm
Unseen, though even the doctor who
Shut your eyes swears you’re somewhere
As close as breath. Mine, not yours.
You don’t have breath. You got
Heaven. That’s supposed to be my
Haven. I want you to tell me it sparkles
There. I want you to tell me anything
Again and again while I turn you over
To quiet you or to wake and remind you
I can’t be expected to clean up after a man.
The Virus
Dubbed undetectable, I can’t kill
The people you touch, and I can’t
Blur your view
Of the pansies you’ve planted
Outside the window, meaning
I can’t kill the pansies, but I want to.
I want them dying, and I want
To do the killing. I want you
To heed that I’m still here
Just beneath your skin and in
Each organ
The way anger dwells in a man
Who studies the history of his nation.
If I can’t leave you
Dead, I’ll have
You vexed. Look. Look
Again: show me the color
Of your flowers now.
The Rabbits
I caught them
In couples on the lawn
As I pulled into my driveway
After a night of bare music,
Of drinking on my feet
Because I think I look better
Standing. I should lie. Say
They expressed my desire
To mount and be
Mounted as they scurried
Into the darkest parts of what
I pay for, but I am tired
Of claiming beauty where
There is only truth: the rabbits
Heard me coming an
d said
Danger in whatever tongue
Stops them from making
More. I should say
I understood myself
That way, as danger, engine
Idling, but I thought
Infestation. Now I worry
No one will ever love me—
Furry little delights fucking
In my own front yard and I,
I am reminded of all I’ve gotten
Rid of. And every living
Thing that still must go.
Monotheism
Some people need religion. Me?
I’ve got my long black hair. I twist
The roots and braid it tight. You’re
My villain. You’re a hard father, from
Behind, it whines, tied and tucked,
Untouchable. Then comes
The night— Before I carry my
Mane to bed with me, I sit us
In front of the vanity. Undo. Un-
wind. Finally your fingers, it says
Near my ear, Your fingers. Your
Whole hands. No one’s but yours.
Token
Burg, boro, ville, and wood,
I hate those tiny towns,
Their obligations. If I needed
Anyone to look at me, I’d dye my hair purple
And live in Bemidji. Look at me. I want to dye
My hair purple and never notice
You notice. I want the scandal
In my bedroom but not in the mouths of convenience
Store customers off the nearest highway. Let me be
Another invisible,
Used and forgotten and left
To whatever narrow miseries I make for myself
Without anybody asking
What’s wrong. Concern for my soul offends me, so
I live in the city, the very shape of it
Winding like the mazes of the adult-video outlets
I roamed in my twenties: pay a token to walk through
Tunnels of men, quick and colorless there where we
Each knew what we were,
There where I wasn’t the only one.
The Hammers
They sat on the dresser like anything
I put in my pocket before leaving
The house. I even saw a few little ones
Tilted against the window of my living
Room, metal threats with splinters
For handles. They leaned like those
Teenage boys at the corner who might
Not be teenage boys because they ask
For dollars in the middle of the early
April day and because they knock
At 10 a.m. Do I need help lifting some-
Thing heavy? Yard work? The boys
Seemed not to care that they lay
On the floor lit by the TV. I’d have
Covered them up with linen, with dry
Towels and old coats, but their claw
And sledge and ball-peen heads shone
In the dark, which is, at least, a view
In the dark. And their handles meant
My hands, striking surfaces, getting
Shelves up, finally. One hung
From the narrow end of a spoke
In the ceiling fan, in wait of summer.
I found another propped near the bulb
In the refrigerator. Wasn’t I hungry?
Why have them there if I could not
Use them, if I could not look at my own
Reflection in the mirror and take one
To the temple and knock myself out?
I Know What I Love
It comes from the earth.
It is green with deceit.
Sometimes what I love
Shows up at three
In the morning and
Rushes in to turn me
Upside down. Some-
Times what I love just
Doesn’t show up at all.
It can hurt me if it
Means to… because
That’s what in love
Means. What I love
Understands itself
As properly scarce.
It knows I can’t need
What I don’t go without.
Some nights I hold
My breath. I turn as in
Go bad. When I die
A man or a woman will
Clean up the mess
A body makes. They’ll
Talk about gas prices
And the current drought
As they prepare the blue-
Black cadaver that still,
As the dead do, groans:
I wanted what anyone
With an ear wants—
To be touched and
Touched by a presence
That has no hands.
Crossing
The water is one thing, and one thing for miles.
The water is one thing, making this bridge
Built over the water another. Walk it
Early, walk it back when the day goes dim, everyone
Rising just to find a way toward rest again.
We work, start on one side of the day
Like a planet’s only sun, our eyes straight
Until the flame sinks. The flame sinks. Thank God
I’m different. I’ve figured and counted. I’m not crossing
To cross back. I’m set
On something vast. It reaches
Long as the sea. I’m more than a conqueror, bigger
Than bravery. I don’t march. I’m the one who leaps.
Deliverance
Though I have not shined shoes for it,
Have not suffocated myself handsome
In a tight, bright tie, Sunday comes
To me again as it did in childhood.
We few left who listen to the radio leave
Ourselves available to surprise. We pray
Unaware of prayer. We are an ugly people.
Forgive me, I do not wish to sing
Like Tramaine Hawkins, but Lord if I could
Become the note she belts halfway into
The fifth minute of “The Potter’s House”
When black vocabulary heralds home-
Made belief: For any kind of havoc, there is
Deliverance! She means that even after I am
Not listening. I am not a saint
Because I keep trying to be a sound, something
You will remember
Once you’ve lived enough not to believe in heaven.
Meditations at the New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park
1
Dear Tom Dent,
We still love you
And love what
It means to be
A black college
President’s son
Whose pride
And rebellion
Look like men
In the Seventh Ward.
They groaned
For you, and
Ain’t that music
Too, bodies
Of several
Shades arranged
For one sound
Of want or
Without or wish
A Negro would— Come
Back home,
Little light
Skin, come
Give Daddy
A kiss.
2
I present myself that you might
Understand how you got here
And who you owe. As long as
I can remember the brass band, it
Lives, every goodbye a lie. Every
One of them carries the weight
He chose. And plays it. No theft.
No rape. No flood. No. Not in
This moment. Not in this lovely
Sunlit room of my mind. Holy.
So the Bible says, in the beginning,
Blackness. I am alive. You?
Alive. You bor
n with the nerve
To arrive yawning. You who
Walk without noticing your feet
On an early morning swept hard-
Wood floor: because Eve, because
Lucy. The whole toe of my boot,
Tapping.
3
This chair
Is where
I understand
I am
Nothing if
I can’t
Sit awhile
In the audience
Or alone, sit
Down awhile
And thank God
The seat
Has stayed
Warm.
Dark
I am sick of your sadness,
Jericho Brown, your blackness,
Your books. Sick of you
Laying me down
So I forget how sick
I am. I’m sick of your good looks,
Your debates, your concern, your
Determination to keep your butt
Plump, the little money you earn.
I’m sick of you saying no when yes is as easy
As a young man, bored with you
Saying yes to every request
Though you’re as tired as anyone else yet
Consumed with a single
Diagnosis of health. I’m sick
Of your hurting. I see that
You’re blue. You may be ugly,
But that ain’t new.
Everyone you know is
Just as cracked. Everyone you love is
As dark, or at least as black.
Duplex
Don’t accuse me of sleeping with your man
When I didn’t know you had a man.
Back when I didn’t know you had a man,
The moon glowed above the city’s blackout.
I walked home by moonlight through the blackout.
I was too young to be reasonable.
He was so young, so unreasonable,
He dipped weed in embalming fluid.
He’d dip our weed in embalming fluid.
We’d make love on trains and in dressing rooms.
Love in the subway, love in mall restrooms.
A bore at home, he transformed in the city.
What’s yours at home is a wolf in my city.
You can’t accuse me of sleeping with a man.
Thighs and Ass
Where I am my thickest, I grew
Myself by squat and lunge, and all
The time I sweated, I did not think
Of being divided or entered, though
Yes, I knew meat would lure men,
And flesh properly placed will lead
One to think that he can—when
He runs from what sniffs to kill us—
Mount my back trusting I may carry
The Tradition Page 3
