Work out. Ten laps.
Chin ups. Look good.

Steam room. Dress warm.
Call home. Fresh air.

Eat right. Rest well.
Sweetheart. Safe sex.

Sore throat. Long flu.
Hard nodes. Beware.

Test blood. Count cells.
Reds thin. Whites low.

Dress warm. Eat well.
Short breath. Fatigue.

Night sweats. Dry cough.
Loose stools. Weight loss.

Get mad. Fight back.
Call home. Rest well.

Don’t cry. Take charge.
No sex. Eat right.

Call home. Talk slow.
Chin up. No air.

Arms wide. Nodes hard.
Cough dry. Hold on.

Mouth wide. Drink this.
Breathe in. Breathe out.

No air. Breathe in.
Breathe in. No air.

Black out. White rooms.
Head hot. Feet cold.

No work. Eat right.
CAT scan. Chin up.

Breathe in. Breathe out.
No air. No air.

Thin blood. Sore lungs.
Mouth dry. Mind gone.

Six months? Three weeks?
Can’t eat. No air.

Today? Tonight?
It waits. For me.

Sweet heart. Don’t stop.
Breathe in. Breathe out.

There are too many ancestors, so we are gathering their bones.

The poor ones, their graves broken by the roots of trees. The ones whose headstones have been weathered as blank as snow-drifts.

We have bought the wide plot. We have built the mausoleum. And now we fill it with the bones.

The ones killed in the monsoon floods. The one buried in her wedding dress. The one buried with his medals.

Because there will be a time when we cannot keep track of them, scattered in the cemetery like prodigals, we collect the bones.

The ones whose faces I can still recall. The ones who have been dead for a hundred years. We collect their bones. 

At each opened grave, we think about the body taking its shape as father, sister, cousin, uncle. We hunger for the story of each figure.

We hold the bones, though we know memory is mostly forgetting. Or memory is the sweeper who clears the sidewalk each morning. Or memory is the broom.

The mausoleum is marble, white as certain roses, and shaped like a house. There is room for everyone we will put there.

The rich ones, their gravestones glowing with gold paint. The infants with sweet names.  
We open their graves. We move their bones.

Look back far enough and your family becomes unfamiliar, a circle of people with a fading circumference.  

When I think of it long enough, home becomes a confusion of birthplace, hometown, country, and nation.

We walk through the cemetery, we point to our own, and we gather their bones.

Maybe memory is the desperate pharaoh who commands that the things of this life go with him into the next.

I would take with me the books I loved best. A jar of the ocean spanning my two countries. A slip of my lover’s sunny hair.  

I would take with me a sack of rice. My mother’s orange shawl. The robe my father wears in the kitchen at night, drinking a glass of water.  

That we might go to just one place to worship them, to wonder at who they were, we are moving the bones.  

Our tribe of eros and vinegar. Our black hair, our ordinary minds.

Holding the bones, we say the names of the dead, the music of the syllables, conjuring the hearts they answered to.  We hold the bones. 

Each stern skull. Each proud sternum. Each elegant rib, curved like a horizon.

In California, someone is found hanging
from a tree, and no one knows why;

in my anger, I forget to explain
to our white neighbor, why it matters
that he’s black,

if only she knew
the luxury of not having to worry
whether her life mattered or not–

*

The first time I learned
about the color of my skin
I spent months
crossing a border
where my kind was not welcomed;

the first time I was othered
I was still in the womb
breaking in my naming–

*

In California, a man is found hanging
from a tree, and no one knows why;

someone said,
            it must have been a suicide,

what country is this
where suicide becomes the hopeful thing–

I want to talk about this,
I say to my husband,

do you know what this means?

I have run out of ways
of telling him that he, too, is a black, black man
living in a white, white world

but his body knows
our bodies always know–

*

In California, a black man is found hanging
from a tree, and no one knows why;

when they hear the news, someone asks
what kind of tree,

what country is this
where life is not life if it inhabits a black body
where we have to march in the streets
and get beaten, gassed, hunted down

so someone, anyone, can see this,
this us we see, this us we are, this humanness.

*

I am filled with a quiet furor. What happens
when the body is marked before it is born,
what happens to it
when it is filled with grief
what happens
when no one sees it as such
what happens
to black bodies riddled with war
what war is this
that continues to kill, kill, kill.

*

In California, a black man is found hanging
from a tree, and someone knows why;

we want to say many things
but none seem to get through;

our mother’s grief
is too great to contain us,
too deep to keep us safe

what do you call a country
that kills its people
and calls itself free,

what freedom is this
that has us running
that holds us hostage
that invades our every being
that hunts our children
that takes our fathers
that murders, murders, murders

Stop–
            listen to this:

In California, a black man is found hanging
from a tree, do you know why?

Does it matter
what kind of tree it was, what kind of earth
housed the roots of such tree,

does it matter
whether the man was in his early twenties
with glimmering black skin
and dancing dreadlocks

would you feel better
if it was a suicide

would it be better
if you never heard about this

do you find yourself thinking,
who would do such a thing,

do you find yourself breaking
completely split open
and parts of you erupting out,

did you wonder
about his mother
about her grief
about his beloveds

did you tell yourself
something nice
to forget this hanging body

did you will it away
what else did you do
to let yourself forget
as you did with all the others
did you tell yourself
I would never–but wait, wait:
did you hear:

in California, a black man is found hanging
from a tree, and you know why;

there is nothing more to say
no further reasoning you need to do
no way out of this,

listen closely:

a black man
is found hanging
from a tree

I know you must like trees
these tall muscular giants

housing small fruits,
breathing, living things,

I know you must think
this is a horrific thing
that has happened to a black man

but how many trees
have housed black bodies
how many were complicit
in our collective dying,

how quick are we to forget
the marred history of this land
built on the blood and bones
of our ancestors

how many more
will need to die
until you see, see, see

how many more
gunned down, beaten, suffocated
until you hear
our rightful pleading

how much blood
must you have on your hands
before our children
are finally set free,
listen:

a black man
hangs from a tree

a black man
hangs
from a tree

a black man
hanging from a tree,

how dare you try and absolve yourself
from our collective lynching–

I ask a student how I can help her. Nothing is on her paper.
It’s been that way for thirty-five minutes. She has a headache. 
She asks to leave early. Maybe I asked the wrong question. 
I’ve always been dumb with questions. When I hurt, 
I too have a hard time accepting advice or gentleness.
I owe for an education that hurt, and collectors call my mama’s house. 
I do nothing about my unpaid bills as if that will help. 
I do nothing about the mold on my ceiling, and it spreads. 
I do nothing about the cat’s litter box, and she pisses on my new bath mat. 
Nothing isn’t an absence. Silence isn’t nothing. I told a woman I loved her, 
and she never talked to me again. I told my mama a man hurt me,
and her hard silence told me to keep my story to myself. 
Nothing is full of something, a mass that grows where you cut at it. 
I’ve lost three aunts when white doctors told them the thing they felt 
was nothing. My aunt said nothing when it clawed at her breathing.
I sat in a room while it killed her. I am afraid when nothing keeps me 
in bed for days. I imagine what my beautiful aunts are becoming 
underground, and I cry for them in my sleep where no one can see. 
Nothing is in my bedroom, but I smell my aunt’s perfume 
and wake to my name called from nowhere. I never looked 
into a sky and said it was empty. Maybe that’s why I imagine a god 
up there to fill what seems unimaginable. Some days, I want to live 
inside the words more than my own black body. 
When the white man shoves me so that he can get on the bus first, 
when he says I am nothing but fits it inside a word, and no one stops him, 
I wear a bruise in the morning where he touched me before I was born. 
My mama’s shame spreads inside me. I’ve heard her say 
there was nothing in a grocery store she could afford. I’ve heard her tell 
the landlord she had nothing to her name. There was nothing I could do 
for the young black woman that disappeared on her way to campus. 
They found her purse and her phone, but nothing led them to her. 
Nobody was there to hold Renisha McBride’s hand 
when she was scared of dying. I worry poems are nothing against it. 
My mama said that if I became a poet or a teacher, I’d make nothing, but 
I’ve thrown words like rocks and hit something in a room when I aimed 
for a window. One student says when he writes, it feels 
like nothing can stop him, and his laughter unlocks a door. He invites me 
into his living.

  I have just seen a most beautiful thing,
                     Slim and still,
              Against a gold, gold sky,
              A straight black cypress,
                     Sensitive,
                     Exquisite,
                     A black finger
                     Pointing upwards.
Why, beautiful still finger, are you black?
And why are you pointing upwards?

When my soul touches yours a great chord sings!
How shall I tune it then to other things?
O! That some spot in darkness could be found
That does not vibrate when’er your depth sound.
But everything that touches you and me
Welds us as played strings sound one melody.
Where is the instrument whence the sounds flow?
And whose the master-hand that holds the bow?
O! Sweet song—

You can’t remember what they did to you. Your loneliness isn’t welcome here, you know, but still you walk the dream-lit village, looking for someone gentle enough. There must be an animal trapped under your shirt, you think, because little claws scratch against your chest and you throb there, but you're afraid to look because looking means remembering. You ask a man passing on the road to lift your shirt and check and he retches at what he sees, says the flesh there overflows, as if grinding its own meat, that strips of skin curl away from the wound like rot mushrooms growing on a tree, and he can't help you, you make him sick, he says, he has to go now, so you wander some more until you reach the gate, which is the end of who you could have been, the end of the dream of your body made full with starmilk, propelled by a heart of sea anemone. You’ll be hungry forever if you stay here, trying to hide your secret mouth from all this light. Before you can cross the gate into that dark valley, you must look at yourself. You can think of other words for red: crimson, cherry, scarlet. But there's no other name for blood, no name for a shame like this, its hiss of pain when you press your finger to it, the sweet stain it leaves on your fingertip. You just have to taste it.