Love comes quietly,
finally, drops
about me, on me,
in the old ways.

What did I know
thinking myself
able to go
alone all the way.

One does such work as one will not,
    And well each knows the right;
Though the white storm howls, or the sun is hot,
    The black must serve the white.
And it’s, oh, for the white man’s softening flesh,
    While the black man’s muscles grow!
Well I know which grows the mightier,
    I know; full well I know.

The white man seeks the soft, fat place,
    And he moves and he works by rule.
Ingenious grows the humbler race
    In Oppression’s prodding school.
And it’s, oh, for a white man gone to seed,
    While the Negro struggles so!
And I know which race develops most,
    I know; yes, well I know.

The white man rides in a palace car,
    And the Negro rides “Jim Crow”
To damn the other with bolt and bar,
    One creepeth so low; so low!
And it’s, oh, for a master’s nose in the mire,
    While the humbled hearts o’erflow!
Well I know whose soul grows big at this,
    And whose grows small; I know!

The white man leases out his land,
    And the Negro tills the same.
One works; one loafs and takes command;
    But I know who wins the game!
And it’s, oh, for the white man’s shrinking soil.
    As the black’s rich acres grow!
Well I know how the signs point out at last,
    I know; ah, well I know!

The white man votes for his color’s sake.
    While the black, for his is barred;
(Though “ignorance” is the charge they make),
    But the black man studies hard.
And it’s, oh, for the white man’s sad neglect,
    For the power of his light let go!
So, I know which man must win at last,
    I know! Ah, Friend, I know!

In the invitation, I tell them for the seventeenth time
(the fourth in writing), that I am gay.

In the invitation, I include a picture of my boyfriend
& write, You’ve met him two times. But this time,

you will ask him things other than can you pass the
whatever. You will ask him

about him. You will enjoy dinner. You will be
enjoyable. Please RSVP.

They RSVP. They come.
They sit at the table & ask my boyfriend

the first of the conversation starters I slip them
upon arrival: How is work going?

I’m like the kid in Home Alone, orchestrating
every movement of a proper family, as if a pair

of scary yet deeply incompetent burglars
is watching from the outside.

My boyfriend responds in his chipper way.
I pass my father a bowl of fish ball soup—So comforting,

isn’t it? My mother smiles her best
Sitting with Her Son’s Boyfriend

Who Is a Boy Smile. I smile my Hurray for Doing
a Little Better Smile.

Everyone eats soup.
Then, my mother turns

to me, whispers in Mandarin, Is he coming with you
for Thanksgiving? My good friend is & she wouldn’t like

this. I’m like the kid in Home Alone, pulling
on the string that makes my cardboard mother

more motherly, except she is
not cardboard, she is

already, exceedingly my mother. Waiting
for my answer.

While my father opens up
a Boston Globe, when the invitation

clearly stated: No security
blankets. I’m like the kid

in Home Alone, except the home
is my apartment, & I’m much older, & not alone,

& not the one who needs
to learn, has to—Remind me

what’s in that recipe again, my boyfriend says
to my mother, as though they have always, easily

talked. As though no one has told him
many times, what a nonlinear slapstick meets

slasher flick meets psychological
pit he is now co-starring in.

Remind me, he says
to our family.

I’m in my room writing

speaking in myself

& I hear you

move down the hallway

to water your plants

I write truth on the page

I strike the word over & over

yet I worry you’ll pour too much water on the plants

& the water will overflow onto the books

ruining them

If I can’t speak out of myself

how can I tell you I don’t care about the plants?

how can I tell you I don’t care if the books get wet?

We’ve been together seven years

& only now do I begin

clearing my throat to speak to you.

All I remember is the coppiced terrain I crossed to find a house to rest in. Who is the woman lurking in the woods? A fellow traveler. I’m not used to seeing others. She is lost and I am lost but the difference is she is a novice at being lost, whereas I have always been without country. Without planet. When we happen upon a cabin I ask the house for shelter on her behalf. I’m aware that we come off as oogles but want to prove we are different by washing dishes. To concretize my gratitude. 

In the morning, before the others awake, I set off for the holy site in a horse-drawn carriage. The carriage has a detachable sleeping chamber designed so that a princely man can carry me supine whenever the horse gets tired. 

At sunset my pilgrimage is complete. The Asian market is a glass palace overlooking an airport. From outside the Palace of Snacks the products shine like organs inside a hard, translucent skin. As I take the palace escalator heavenward my eyes are fixed on an airplane parked on the runway. 

It is waiting for me. 

In the rain, in her head, an elegy for the not-quite-dead.

Some peonies placed beside her body, supine beneath the canopy of forgotten dreams.

She woke in such a state, such a state that she had to take shelter from the beloved's rain beneath a tree.

It rained so hard she didn't know where she was.

I don’t like being left to myself like this.

“More than gems in my comb box shaped by the
God of the Sea, I prize you, my daughter . . .”
—Lady Otomo, eighth century, Japan

A woman weaves 
her daughter’s wedding 
slippers that will carry 
her steps into a new life. 
The mother weeps alone
into her jeweled sewing box	
slips red thread
around its spool, 
the same she used to stitch 
her daughter’s first silk jacket 
embroidered with turtles 
that would bring luck, long life. 
She remembers all the steps 
taken by her daughter’s 
unbound quick feet:
dancing on the stones 
of the yard among yellow
butterflies and white breasted sparrows. 
And she grew, legs strong 
body long, mind
independent.
Now she captures all eyes 
with her hair combed smooth 
and her hips gently 
swaying like bamboo. 
The woman
spins her thread 
from the spool of her heart, 
knotted to her daughter‘s 
departing
wedding slippers.

Things got terribly ugly incredibly quickly 

Things got ugly embarrassingly quickly 

actually Things got ugly unbelievably quickly 

honestly Things got ugly seemingly infrequently 

initially Things got ugly ironically usually 

awfully carefully Things got ugly unsuccessfully 

occasionally Things got ugly mostly painstakingly 

quietly seemingly Things got ugly beautifully 

infrequently Things got ugly sadly especially 

frequently unfortunately Things got ugly 

increasingly obviously Things got ugly suddenly

embarrassingly forcefully Things got really ugly 

regularly truly quickly Things got really incredibly 

ugly Things will get less ugly inevitably hopefully 

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.

And I understand well now, it is beautiful
to be dumb: my tyrannical inclinations, my love
for the prodigal jocks aging from primetime
to pastime, the pixilated plain people and colored folk

with homemade signs. Cutouts, cutups, ambushes,
bushwackers. The clouds are overwhelmed
and vainglorious. MC Mnemosyne showed up

around midnight like the undetectable dew
weighing the leaves, and I was like Awww shit.
Why ain't I dead yet
like the man who wanted to be buried

with the multi-million dollar Van Gogh he bought?
(Members of The Arts League said No
because there was culture to be made into money.)

The volant statues of the aviary, the jabber-jawed
cable channels and the book in which nothing is written
but the words everyone uses to identify things
that can’t be identified. Not that I ain’t spent

the last ten years of my life refining my inner cyborg.
Interview questions included how did the DJ break his hands,
who’s gone bury the morticians who bury the dead,

And what to do about the sublime and awful music
of grade school marching bands?
Not that Neanderthals have a sense of the existential.
Me and my forty-leventh cousins lolling, and LOL-ing

like chthonic chronic smoke, like high-water suit pants
and extreme quiet. Everybody clap ya hands.
Like fit girls in fitted outfits, misfits who don’t cry enough,

who definitely don’t sob, but keep showing up sighing.
Everyone loves to identify things that have not been identified.
The rabbit hole, where ever I find it, symbolizes solitude.
So that’s exciting. And an argument can be made

on behalf of athletes, rap stars, and various other brothers
who refuse (click here for the entire video)
to wear shirts in public when one considers the beauty

of a black torso. If and when the dashiki is fashionable
again I will sport it with the aplomb of a peacock plume.
For now, I have a row of coin-sized buttons tattooed
down my chest so it looks like I mean business

when I'm naked. I know that means a lot to you.