Forget each slight, each head that turned

Toward something more intriguing—

Red flash of wing beyond the window,

The woman brightly chiming

About the suffering of the world. Forget

The way your best friend told the story



Of that heroic road trip, forgetting that you drove

From Tulsa to Poughkeepsie while he

Slumped dozing under headphones. Forget



The honors handed out, the lists of winners.

Forget the certificates, bright trophies you

Could have, should have, maybe won.



Remind yourself you never wanted them.

When the spotlight briefly shone on you,

You stepped back into darkness,



Let the empty stage receive the light,

The black floor suddenly less black—

Scuff-marks, dust, blue tape—the cone



Of light so perfect, slicing silently that perfect

Silent darkness, and you, hidden in that wider dark,

Your refusal a kind of gratitude at last.

Did tear along.

Did carry the sour heave

of memory. Did fold my body

upon the pillow’s curve,

did teach myself to pray.

Did pray. Did sleep. Did choir

an echo to swell through time.

Did pocket watch, did compass.

Did whisper a girl from the silence

of ghost. Did travel on the folded map

to the roaring inside. Did see myself

smaller, at least, stranger,

where the hinge of losing had not yet

become loss. Did vein, did hollow

in light, did hold my own chapped hand.

Did hair, did makeup, did press

the pigment on my broken lip.

Did stutter. Did slur. Did shush

my open mouth, the empty glove.

Did grace, did dare, did learn the way

forgiveness is the heaviest thing to bare.

Did grieve. Did grief. Did check the weather,

choose the sweater, did patch the jeans

worn out along the seam. Did purchase,

did pressure, did put the safety on the scissors.

Did shuttle myself away, did haunt, did swallow

a tongue of sweat formed on the belly

of a day-old glass. Did ice, did block,

did measure the doing. Did carry.

Did return. Did slumber, did speak.

Did wash blood from the bitten nail,

the thumb that bruised. Did wash

the dirt-stained face, the dirt-stained

sheets. Did take the pills. Did not

take the pills. Cut the knots

from my own matted hair.

To live without the one you love
an empty dream never known
true happiness except as such youth

watching snow at window
listening to old music through morning.
Riding down that deserted street

by evening in a lonely cab
     past a blighted theatre
oh god yes, I missed the chance of my life

     when I gasped, when I got up and
        rushed out the room
          away from you.

My mother swapped prayer for sharp screams when my
sister crowned. The epidural settled
on one side until the nerves in her left
hip became stars, dying down the dark of
her thigh. At 17, I watched a girl-
child emerge covered in only-God-can-
name. Maybe, blood-light. Star-vein. Water-
sky. A boneless sea creature who knows some-
thing about the universe sitting next
to ours. I don’t want to go back nor do
I want to die this way—making daughters.
My body has a tenure of chaos
and blood. It’s clotting and ache began at
the edge of girlhood. I see no way out.

    I have a friend
And my heart from hence
Is closed to friendship,
Nor the gods’ knees hold but one;
He watches with me thru the long night,
And when I call he comes,
Or when he calls I am there;
He does not ask me how beloved
Are my husband and children,
Nor ever do I require
Details of life and love
In the grave—his home,—
    We are such friends.

^{translated from the Arabic by Kareem James Abu-Zeid}

And all that remains for me is to follow a violet darkness
on soil where myths splinter and crack.
Yes, love was time, and it too
splintered and cracked
like the face of our country.

My share of the people
is the transit of their ghosts.

عتَمات بنفسجيّة

  
ولَيْسَ سِوى أَن أَتْبَعَ عَتَماتٍ بَنَفْسَجيّة
فَوْقَ تُرْبَةٍ تَتَشَقَّقُ فيها الأَساطير 
،أَجَلْ، كانَ الحُبُّ زَمَناً وتَشَقَّقَ، هو الآخَرُ 
مِثْلَ وَجْهِ بلادِنا

.حِصَّتي مِنَ النّاس عُبورُ أَشْباحِهِم

The Bud Light crystallizing in the freezer

Hides high above a child’s reach

The Uncles table sits in the backyard of my mother’s house parties

The beer and barbecue footnote their good time

I go to greet them like daughter, like niece, like good girl,

They say. Like grown woman now, they say.

At what age did uncles stop seeing me as a little girl

Since when did they dress up my growth with their pick-up lines?

Each word sharpening a knife of bedside manner

Each nervous laugh covering up the names of women who don’t stay

Oh you’re a teacher now? They repeat with bedroom eyes

Teach me, they say. To my classroom, they say, I want to come.

The pork belly on the table I used to draw on as a kid

Curls in the cold air, sausage cackling char on the grill

Flatlining my red lips I paint for myself

My voice a fire extinguisher

Against all the family men who pretend family means

Things I can get away with

A myth of fragility trapping too many girls

Forced to call mercy

Each beer sip    a squeal silenced

Each man still a swine on the spit

(Mather AFB, California, 1956)

When we play horses at recess, my name
is Moonlily and I’m a yearling mare.
We gallop circles around the playground,
whinnying, neighing, and shaking our manes.
We scrape the ground with scuffed saddle oxfords,
thunder around the little kids on swings
and seesaws, and around the boys’ ball games.
We’re sorrel, chestnut, buckskin, pinto, gray,
a herd in pastel dresses and white socks.
We’re self-named, untamed, untouched, unridden.
Our plains know no fences. We can smell spring.
The bell produces metamorphosis.
Still hot and flushed, we file back to our desks,
one bay in a room of palominos.

I’m docked at a lake that

the people don’t attend.

Machete on my hip to

make a devil cough up

blood    dust and light.

Hungry for ruins of

an afternoon of anything

wild and willing to stick

its neck through the roof

of the leftover lake. I’m

docked at a lake that ain’t

got no river    in a field that

ain’t    got no fence    under a

sun that ain’t    never heard

of mercy. I’m docked at the

edge of an unfortunate dinner

next to a wet knot of Cotton-

mouths    too big to see.

Of course, I don’t know very much

    About these politics,

But I think that some who run ’em

    Do mighty ugly tricks.

I’ve seen ’em honey-fugle round,

    And talk so awful sweet,

That you’d think them full of kindness,

    As an egg is full of meat.

Now I don’t believe in looking

    Honest people in the face,

And saying when you’re doing wrong,

    That “I haven’t sold my race.”

When we want to school our children,

    If the money isn’t there, 

Whether black or white have took it,

    The loss we all must share.

And this buying up each other

    Is something worse than mean,

Though I thinks a heap of voting,

    I go for voting clean. 

          ^{a mistranslation of Ursula Andkjær Olsen’s trilogy 
          through a game of Spider Solitaire}

at all times
a sensation of intricate webs
soft, possibly smooth, and heavy

life does not mean the same to them as it does to us:
i lie on their sweat-embroidery

i am allowed to be upset here
fully plugged in
glistening and inaccessible

i eat everything and i am everything:
a garden of marble
between ornamented walls

^{Thysville Prison, 1960}

I write you these words not knowing whether you will receive them,
when you will receive them, and whether I will still be alive when

you read them: opening, the letter knows itself to be a vision :
a key proper to the dark lock and behind the door : a plane

of light muted as a savannah’s revelation of a woman walking
fringed by children: hers : his : a nation’s : the writer formed

by the ink of a self-determination, a broader promise, what we
wanted for our country—its right to an honorable life, to perfect

dignity, to independence with no restrictions : he knows his wife
will not read the letter: she will hear it read : he knows, reader,

that you will know he speaks to you : What else can I say? he writes.
It is not my person that is important. What is important is the Congo

. . . people whose independence has been turned into a cage, with people
looking at us from outside the bars he says, through bars :

outside : in : how his faith will remain unshakable :
how We are not alone.

^{Léopoldville, 17 February 1966}

Dear Mother,

             I imagine how much you’ve suffered

                                                   with no word from me

for three months.

                                                   I suffered

knowing                      what you could have feared.

                                                              I went

—no—was sent

     to a remote province.

The local authorities there

                                                did everything they could

                                                           to make

our lives miserable.

                                               They did not like Haitians.

They cut

     our communication with the exterior.

      Our letters
                        were blocked.

      We were, in effect, prisoners.

                                             I was finally able to get out

                        of that cursed place.

      If everything

      works out, I’ll stay in Léo.

      If Léo gives us trouble,

                        I’ll go to Germany

      to look for work
                        and study.

      If this doesn’t work

                   I’ll will go

                          to the UNITED STATES.

      Otherwise,

                   I will return home.

      Dear mother

                   my account has not been updated

      I can send you nothing right now.

                   Send me Gérard’s address in Germany.

                                     Cable it as soon as you can.

      I wrote Serge, you, and Edouard,

                   each two letters from Inongo. They were,

                   no doubt, confiscated at Inongo.

      Now I am at the address above.

                                  While waiting for your news,

      receive Dear Mother,

            the affection and kisses of your son

                   who has never stopped thinking of you.

      Rodney

i

como niños aprendimos
a arrancarnos la lengua
de nuestras propias bocas
y tirarlas afuera de los salones
de nuestras maestras     ellas     listas
con lenguas postizas de inglés

ii

¿qué sabían mami y papi
trabajadores desde niños
de la miseria cordial
de la linguicidia?
noches no notaron
el vacío en las cuevas
de nuestras bocas

arrancar: to yank

i

as children we learned
how to yank our own tongues
from our mouths, to throw
them outside of the classrooms
of our teachers     they     ready
with prosthetic tongues in english
 

ii

what did mami and papi
workers themselves since childhood
know about the cordial misery
of linguicide?
nights they did not remember
the emptiness in the caves 
of our mouths

Easy light storms in through the window, soft
            edges of the world, smudged by mist, a squirrel’s 

            nest rigged high in the maple. I’ve got a bone 
to pick with whomever is in charge. All year, 

I’ve said, You know what’s funny? and then,
            Nothing, nothing is funny. Which makes me laugh

            in an oblivion-is-coming sort of way. A friend
writes the word lover in a note and I am strangely

excited for the word lover to come back. Come back
            lover, come back to the five and dime. I could 

            squeal with the idea of blissful release, oh lover,
what a word, what a world, this gray waiting. In me,

a need to nestle deep into the safe-keeping of sky.
            I am too used to nostalgia now, a sweet escape

            of age. Centuries of pleasure before us and after
us, still right now, a softness like the worn fabric of a nightshirt

and what I do not say is, I trust the world to come back.
            Return like a word, long forgotten and maligned 

            for all its gross tenderness, a joke told in a sun beam,
the world walking in, ready to be ravaged, open for business.

stdnt sks                  
             hw s th flyng thng splld?

tchr sys        
             ll th sft lttrs hv blwn ff
             spll brd
                                                                            lk         brd

tchr tlls stry
                        frst mnfst dstny
                        th bffl wr hntd nd skltns stckd
                        th ntv ppl wr pshd n slghtrd
                      
             tk wht th y cn s

             thn crps plntd nd plntd nd plntd nd plntd
             thn dry nd ht nd dry nd cld nd dry nd ht
                        thn rbbts nd rbbts nd rbbts
                        thn mn clbbd ll th rbbts
             pld nd lghd
                        vrythng brnd
                        ll th ppl thrstd nd th lnd crckd
                        brd jst lft bfr snrs nd snst
                        brd dsspprd
                        thn nsts mpty
           

stdnt sks       
             wht hppnd t brd?

tchr sys         
             brd sys n brnchs t prch nd crps cllps nd hrvsts nd n wrms s hngry
                      
             brd sys           spk sky                        spk
                                                                                                 drk spk                      
             ll thngs trnd psdwn
                       
                                                                           thn blw wy
                      
             nd trnds nd hrrcns nd wrs nd dss
             nd nthng lvng

stdnt sks       
             dd brd knw?

tchr nswrs    
             brd knw          trd t spk
                                      thrt splt

             brd ndd wtr

stdnt sys       
             whts wtr?