is up The Met’s stone steps,
so many that I have trouble collecting 
my girthy tourist’s breaths

and my palms, all sweaty, 
smeared with ink 
from his crinkled face,

wrinkled in the brochure, and
to think I’m too underdressed 
for a pocket square,

so up goes the tee’s hem
to blot my forehead dry
enough, when, of course,

there goes my furry gut’s apron
for everyone to see 
it unfurling like the carpet

Claudia Schiffer stomped
toward that one Lagerfeld photoshoot:
her mean mien

of a pouty puss made up 
to an almost-
black face, blond braided back

under a theoretical afro, 
an aphrodisiac, you know, 
what men want, a diasporic taste

in their ladies: hot 
enough to boil a stew pot, thin 
as ladle handles, good cooks

in the bedroom—yet 
still Lagerfeld wanted
supremacy’s payload, to not see

that which was too colored 
for his pleathered hands to hold 
not but to plunder, and so here we are

staring up at his sketched waifs,
craning our necks
to take in the niched wall,

each gown an upturned urn
shelved in its own alcove, 
dressed in nothing

but archive’s bleached light, 
the mannequins’ clean faces 
looking down on us—

crowded together 
like the staggered heads 
of snaggleteeth 
in his stitched mouth.

^{Forbes, July 20, 2020}

The sky is so clean    we can see 
all the gods we’ve negotiated with     Coyotes 
swagger through the neighborhood

unchallenged    Roosters say nothing

The same ambulance lurks on 
our street without sirens every few nights 
and leaves with something 

broken: the veteran four houses south 
who shouts commands each morning while twirling 
his parade rifle     the battered wife 
in the green house across the street     bodies

Lights strobe 
through our blinds     First responders are here again 
When the street becomes dark 
we are brave     We peek out the window

to see Mars’s faraway red glow or to count the dead 
stars

         From above, stolen 
land here is brown, green, mauve:  
          as if a child’s hand drew a frog’s palm, 
          colored it so. Slender fingers, meaty 
          ends— 
here again buildings bend but do not fall, bear  
shadows almost black, interrupted by a splinter  
of silver country road here or there.

         When my elders passed I lost 
more than their poise or laughter or mischief 
or their small cruelties or care—long muscle 
of history, sliver of my very first breath.

         To leave, to arrive— 
 to catch a self at home.

At the end

of the story,

we exchanged

hair. Two tiny

Ziploc bags,

little plastic

windows.

I sheared off

the tip 

of my braid,

candlewick

twist-tight.

Please

use these

dead cells

to make

new words.

We never

baked

the blueberry

crumble:

let the

mashed bowl

of indigo

fruit

on the

counter

be your ink.

Dip me

whole

into the

sweet

blood &

try to

write

about

cutting

hair &

a scissor’s

song,

its sound

akin to

a memory

holding its

own

breath.

I wear

your black

cursive

on my chin,

& imagine

being the

teenaged boy

that you will

raise

with a lover

that looks

like me.

I wrap

you around

my wedding

finger, pull

& watch

you snap back

until you yawn.

I dress

you in the

foam of

apricot shampoo,

spin you in

my palm

to wash out

time.

At midnight,

you lay me

at the nape

of your neck,

guarding

your spine,

in the blue violet                                                                                                                 

of dream’s

intermissions.

We are

climbing

strands

to each other’s

roots,

searching

for homes

that we

have

already

passed.

Behind

your head

& in my hands,

we are closer

than secret.

Fat Southern men in their summer suits,
Usually with suspenders, love to sweat
Into and even through their coats,

Taking it as a matter of honor to do so,
Especially when the humidity gets as close
As it does each Southern summer.

Some think men could do better
By just going ahead and taking the damned
Coats off, but the summer code stays

Because summer is the time
For many men, no matter what their class,
To be Southern Gentlemen by keeping

Those coats on. So late in life here I am
Down here again, having run to fat
(As Southern men tend), visiting the farm

Where my grandfather deposited
So much of his own working sweat,
Where Granddaddy never bought into any

Of “that Southern Gentleman crap.”
Up north where I landed in the urban
Middle class I am seldom caught

Not wearing a coat of some kind. I love
The coats, and though I love them most
In the fall I still enact the summer code,

I suppose, because my father and I did buy
That code, even though I organized students
To strike down any dress code whatsoever

In the high school I attended (it was a matter
Of honor). And it still puts me in good humor
To abide with the many pockets, including

One for a flask. So whether it’s New York,
Vermont, or Virginia, the spectacle
Of the summer seersucker proceeds,

Suspenders and all, and I lean into the sweat
(Right down to where the weather really is)
Until it has entirely soaked through my jacket.

^{translated from the Spanish by Yvette Siegert}

I feel God walking
deep within me, with the evening and the sea.
With him we leave. The night falls.
With him we nightfall. Orphaning. . . 

But I feel God. It even seems
I take his dictation for some fine color.
Like a hospitalist, he is sad and he is good;
he languishes, a sweet disdainful lover.
How his heart must ache.

Oh, my God, it’s only now I come to you—
this late day, when I am full of love and
turn to the rigged balance of a pair of breasts
to weigh and grieve this frail creation.

But oh you, how you sob . . . you, enamored
of such magnificent encircling breasts. . . 
I consecrate you, God, because you love so deeply,
because you never smile, because of how
your heart must always hurt you.

Dios

Siento a Dios que camina
tan en mí, con la tarde y con el mar.
Con él nos vamos juntos. Anochece.
Con él anochecemos, Orfandad. . . 

Pero yo siento a Dios. Y hasta parece
que él me dicta no sé qué buen color.
Como un hospitalario, es bueno y triste;
mustia un dulce desdén de enamorado:
debe dolerte mucho el corazón.

Oh, Dios mío, recién a ti me llego
hoy que amo tanto en esta tarde; hoy
que en la falsa balanza de unos senos,
mido y lloro una frágil Creación.

Y tú, cuál llorarás . . .  tú, enamorado
de tanto enorme seno girador. . . 
Yo te consagro Dios, porque amas tanto;
porque jamás sonríes; porque siempre
debe dolerte mucho el corazón.

I

Living is no laughing matter:
	you must live with great seriousness
		like a squirrel, for example—
   I mean without looking for something beyond and above living,
		I mean living must be your whole occupation.
Living is no laughing matter:
	you must take it seriously,
	so much so and to such a degree
   that, for example, your hands tied behind your back,
                                            your back to the wall,
   or else in a laboratory
	in your white coat and safety glasses,
	you can die for people—
   even for people whose faces you’ve never seen,
   even though you know living
	is the most real, the most beautiful thing.
I mean, you must take living so seriously
   that even at seventy, for example, you’ll plant olive trees—
   and not for your children, either,
   but because although you fear death you don’t believe it,
   because living, I mean, weighs heavier.

II

Let’s say we’re seriously ill, need surgery—
which is to say we might not get up
			from the white table.
Even though it’s impossible not to feel sad
			about going a little too soon,
we’ll still laugh at the jokes being told,
we’ll look out the window to see if it’s raining,
or still wait anxiously
		for the latest newscast . . . 
Let’s say we’re at the front—
	for something worth fighting for, say.
There, in the first offensive, on that very day,
	we might fall on our face, dead.
We’ll know this with a curious anger,
        but we’ll still worry ourselves to death
        about the outcome of the war, which could last years.
Let’s say we’re in prison
and close to fifty,
and we have eighteen more years, say,
                        before the iron doors will open.
We’ll still live with the outside,
with its people and animals, struggle and wind—
                                I  mean with the outside beyond the walls.
I mean, however and wherever we are,
        we must live as if we will never die.

III

This earth will grow cold,
a star among stars
               and one of the smallest,
a gilded mote on blue velvet—
	  I mean this, our great earth.
This earth will grow cold one day,
not like a block of ice
or a dead cloud even 
but like an empty walnut it will roll along
	  in pitch-black space . . . 
You must grieve for this right now
—you have to feel this sorrow now—
for the world must be loved this much
                               if you’re going to say “I lived” . . .

a haibun

Every week for about a decade some of us at school have been standing at lunch hour to protest drones, racism, state killing, the death of species & so on. We stand under a live oak while people walk by on their way to lunch. We hold up the signs. It’s an absurd situation & it changes nothing.  

Sometimes the good doctor Ali brings a boom box with Bob Marley & we dance ineptly on the pavement. The changes fall together. Positive & negative fall together as Bob Marley sustains us near the tree. Cesar Vallejo dances as a flea on the back of a squirrel. Blake & Baraka dance as lithophilic microbes inside the rock. We have no proof that they don’t. The science moths dance in the live oak & go about their work of being powdery. The protest is absurd but i admire these forms of absurdity. When the revolution comes, the polite white mothers in the Moraga Safeway will still be shopping for sugary cereals & barbeque sauce. When the time comes, some will rise & some will dance & some will lay our bodies down. 

I wanted to be the one who thought of truck bed walls.
You locked yourself in the bathroom
so I couldn’t brush my teeth before bed.
Where is this going and will it be successful? I hate bullies.
She’s been everywhere she even heard
the shot that killed John Lennon.
From now on I’m sticking up
for myself. My notes and to-do’s have flowers.
I don’t want to die. I feel scared all the time.
What you looked like as a child is clear.
The way you run from the hot tub
and throw yourself in the pool.
When they were joining the EU.
I worry about mine.
Have you ever seen your own cervix?
You’re like a natural matzoh ball maker.
Why did I ever want to be in the couple
with the white walls three shoes and lots of art.
Scarves from museum shops.
I sat your kid on my counter
and we spilled food everywhere.
The nickname grandchildren give is the one you die with.
Everyone wanted to see a movie where the woman turns to stone.
They say Maria Falconetti never acted again.
The gym was impossible after I fell on my knee.
I walked up to you and cried.
Why do you treat your son better than your daughter.
Talk about something else like did anyone ever call you bro.

^{after Tania Bruguera}

^{Queers—confirmed or suspected—were one of several groups of ‘social
deviants’ imprisoned and sentenced to labor following the Cuban Revolution.
The Cuban government has since taken responsibility, and today, trans
healthcare is provided to Cubans for free.}

power falls twice: you’re either rain
or a worm reacting to it

*

to whom or what do you choose
to bow?

*

may cuba live
island her own, free from us
of a, por siempre

*

gusanería: worms piling
in the absence of light

*

you’ve entered now
your feet crunch mashed bagasse

the cool air whiffs molasses wafts 
can you feel the humans here

each distinct from their rulers?
no one name names the unnamed

*

hands behind your head
you have the silence to remain right

you have the silence to remain
right there, between tooth & gum

*

to whom do you bow
against your will?

*

look: looped video in darkened cove
all you see is leader smiling

leader in profile leader hugging
& kissing the masses

he bares his furry chest
sans bulletproof vest

young fidel? you would
& so would we—

what about young w. bush
or younger or older obama

& there’s that one stalin shot!
we see time after time

how politekind thirsts for stained
palms on our star-struck thighs

*

once you walk away
what becomes of those who cannot?

*

gusanería: light’s absence
piling the worms

*

a man who thinks himself rain
would claim any old flood was just

^{Prince tour, Public Hall, November 21, 1982}

By the time I got here, the album
            was already history. 1999 dropped in 1982, 
when I worried about what I’d do with my life

after high school, and as I fretted over 
            how my hair looked on mornings 
before I left for school; though, sadly,

my worries were not in that order. 
            But when I faced the end of the century, 
I realized I knew little more then than I did when I sang

along with Prince at the Coliseum in Cleveland.
            On that night, I didn’t know a concert could be history. 
Me, just living in a moment of not recalling any moment

before this one, which must be what joy
            was, but what did I know? No one understood 
what a new century would look like,

and I didn’t gather that I’d lose loved
            ones, soon after the pages of the calendar tore away.
Back then, I didn’t understand what I’d be

if Prince had not been. Now, years later, 
            “life is just a party, and parties weren’t meant to last.”
His lyrics weigh on me, as I grow older and ill,

and years later I’ll barely remember this moment 
            of simply remembering, just another day called today.
But this time, even now, I know more:

I know, for instance, even as I hum a tune 
            and bring forth memories of that night, 
I’ve already become a point in history

before I even finish this song.

I cannot rest, I cannot rest 
   In strait and shiny wood, 
My woven hands upon my breast—
   The dead are all so good! 

The earth is cool across their eyes; 
    They lie there quietly. 
But I am neither old nor wise, 
    They do not welcome me. 

Where never I walked alone before
   I wander in the weeds; 
And people scream and bar the door, 
   And rattle at their beads. 

We cannot rest, we never rest
   Within a narrow bed
Who still must love the living best—
    Who hate the drowsy dead! 

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it—

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?—

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot—
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I’ve a call.

It’s easy enough to do it in a cell.
It’s easy enough to do it and stay put.
It’s the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

‘A miracle!’
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart—
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash—
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there--

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

23–29 October 1962

Trip the door to stick, 
we with the bag mouths

yawping in the blank
space where our joy

once lived, little blooming 
weed, purple dead nettle 

where have you gone
good flourishing? Red 

feather I found bent 
on the wildflower berm

soaked but not soaked 
simply shadowed still 

unweighted, insistent 
it belongs to flight. 

We'll say unbelievable things 
to each other in the early morning— 
  
our blue coming up from our roots, 
our water rising in our extraordinary limbs. 
  
All night I dreamt of bonfires and burn piles 
and ghosts of men, and spirits 
behind those birds of flame. 
  
I cannot tell anymore when a door opens or closes, 
I can only hear the frame saying, Walk through. 
  
It is a short walkway— 
into another bedroom. 
  
Consider the handle. Consider the key. 
  
I say to a friend, how scared I am of sharks. 
  
How I thought I saw them in the creek 
across from my street. 
  
I once watched for them, holding a bundle 
of rattlesnake grass in my hand, 
shaking like a weak-leaf girl. 
  
She sends me an article from a recent National Geographic that says, 
  
Sharks bite fewer people each year than 
New Yorkers do, according to Health Department records. 
  
Then she sends me on my way. Into the City of Sharks. 
  
Through another doorway, I walk to the East River saying, 
  
Sharks are people too. 
Sharks are people too. 
Sharks are people too. 
  
I write all the things I need on the bottom 
of my tennis shoes. I say, Let's walk together. 
  
The sun behind me is like a fire. 
Tiny flames in the river's ripples. 
  
I say something to God, but he's not a living thing, 
so I say it to the river, I say, 
  
I want to walk through this doorway 
But without all those ghosts on the edge, 
I want them to stay here. 
I want them to go on without me. 
  
I want them to burn in the water.

to a man who’s dating a man who’s                                                         
married to a woman. The husband

of the man I’m dating knows he’s
dating me and my boyfriend knows his

husband is dating the man who’s
married to the woman who does not

know her husband is gay. The guy
she’s married to—the boyfriend

of my boyfriend’s husband—just told
his mom he’s gay and she’s happy

because she never liked his wife
which is kind of funny but mostly

sad and I feel sad that her husband
who’s dating a man is also a man

with a mother who has never liked her.
I tell my boyfriend to tell his husband

to tell his boyfriend that he needs
to tell his wife sooner rather than later

and I know he knows that but still it needs
to be said. My boyfriend said his husband

said his boyfriend plans to tell his wife
Memorial Day weekend when his grown

kids are home from college and everyone,
I imagine, is eating potato salad by the pool.

She works at a flower shop two towns
over. I want to go there when she’s not

there and buy her flowers, leave a note
with her coworker at the counter:

              You deserve happiness, Natalie.
              You deserve love.

              Love,

              Your husband’s boyfriend’s
              husband’s boyfriend.

'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
"Their colour is a diabolic die."
Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,
May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn’t he danced his did.

Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn’t they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone’s any was all to her

someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain

the unholy trinity of suburban late-night salvation
barring seemingly endless options of worship

bean burrito breadsticks and mashed potatoes
or a soft taco pan pizza and a buttered biscuit

an unimaginable combination of food flavors
for people not ready to go home to their parents

and yet none of the options feel quite right
so maybe I should call it Self-Portrait as idling

in a drive-thru with your friends crammed
across the sunken bench seats avoiding

the glow of the check engine light with black tape
pressed with a precision unseen anywhere else

in their lives as a fractured voice says don’t worry
take your time and order whenever you’re ready

from behind a menu backlit like the window
inside of a confessional booth as the hands

of the driver open up like a collection basket
for the wadded-up bills and loose change

that slowly stack up as the years go by
and I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be

in this analogy but I know about masking
warning signs and hearing out of tune

voices scream WE’RE THE KIDS WHO FEEL
LIKE DEAD ENDS so instead I’ll call it Self-

Portrait as From Under the Cork Tree
or maybe even Self-Portrait as whatever

album people listen to when they love
their friends and still want to feel connected

to the grass walls of a teenage wasteland
that they can’t help but run away from

(for Ntozake Shange)

I used to be a roller coaster girl
7 times in a row
No vertigo in these skinny legs
My lipstick bubblegum pink 
                          As my panther 10 speed.

never kissed

Nappy pigtails, no-brand gym shoes 
White lined yellow short-shorts

Scratched up legs pedaling past borders of 
humus and baba ganoush 
Masjids and liquor stores 
City chicken, pepperoni bread 
and superman ice cream 
                                    Cones.

Yellow black blending with bits of Arabic
Islam and Catholicism. 

My daddy was Jesus 
My mother was quiet
Jayne Kennedy was worshipped 
by my brother Mark

I don’t remember having my own bed before 12. 
Me and my sister Lisa                                shared. 

Sometimes all three Moore girls slept in the Queen.

You grow up so close 
never close enough.

I used to be a roller coaster girl 
Wild child full of flowers and ideas
Useless crushes on        polish boys 
in a school full of         white girls. 

Future black swan singing 
Zeppelin, U2 and Rick Springfield

Hoping to be Jessie’s Girl 

I could outrun my brothers and 
Everybody else to that 

reoccurring line

I used to be a roller coaster girl
Till you told me I was moving too fast
Said my rush made your head spin 
My laughter hurt your ears

A scream of happiness 
A whisper of freedom 
Pouring out my armpits 
Sweating up my neck 

You were always the scared one
I kept my eyes open for the entire trip
Right before the drop I would brace myself
And let that force push my head back into 

That hard iron seat

My arms nearly fell off a few times
Still, I kept running back to the line  
When I was done
Same way I kept running back to you

I used to be a roller coaster girl
I wasn’t scared of mountains or falling  
Hell, I looked forward to flying and dropping
Off this earth and coming back to life 

every once in a while

I found some peace in being out of control 
allowing my blood to race
through my veins for 180 seconds 

I earned my sometime nicotine pull 
I buy my own damn drinks & the ocean
Still calls my name when it feels my toes 
Near its shore. 

I still love roller coasters 
& you grew up to be 
Afraid 
of all girls who cld  
                                          ride 

Fearlessly

like 
me. 

World Cup finals, France v. Brasil.
We gather in Gideon’s yard and grill.
The TV sits in the bright sunshine.
We want Brasil but Brasil won’t win.
Aden waves a desultory green and yellow flag.
From the East to the West to the West to the East
we scatter and settle and scatter some more.
Through the window, Mamma watches from the cool indoors.

Jonah scarfs meat off of everybody’s plate,
kicks a basketball long and hollers, “goal,”
then roars like the mighty lion he is.
Baby is a pasha surrounded by pillows
and a bevy of Horn of Africa girls
who coo like lovers, pronounce his wonders,
oil and massage him, brush his hair.
My African family is having a picnic, here in the USA.

Who is here and who is not?
When will the phone ring from far away?
Who in a few days will say good-bye?
Who will arrive with a package from home?
Who will send presents in other people’s luggage
and envelopes of money in other people’s pockets?
Other people’s children have become our children
here at the African picnic.

In a parking lot, in a taxi-cab,
in a winter coat, in an airport queue,
at the INS, on the telephone,
on the cross-town bus, on a South Side street,
in a brand-new car, in a djellaba,
with a cardboard box, with a Samsonite,
with an airmail post, with a bag of spice,
at the African picnic people come and go.

The mailman sees us say good-bye and waves
with us, good-bye, good-bye, as we throw popcorn,
ululate, ten or twelve suitcases stuffed in the car.
Good-bye, Mamma, good-bye—
The front door shut. The driveway bare.
Good-bye, Mamma, good-bye.
The jet alights into the night,
a huge, metal machine in flight,
Good-bye, Mamma, good-bye.
At the African picnic, people come and go
and say good-bye.

I’m writing 
a love poem 
even with 
an American 
boot to 
my throat. 

I lick the croony 
sole and picture 
you in a fresh white 
wife pleaser. 

You got 
two fingers 
dripping money 
down my mouth. 

Our razor 
can do 
so much. 

A book is a suicide postponed.

--Cioran

Too volatile, am I?  too voluble?  too much a word-person?
I blame the soup:  I'm a primordially
stirred person.

Two pronouns and a vehicle was Icarus with wings.
The apparatus of his selves made an ab-
surd person.

The sound I make is sympathy's:  sad dogs are tied afar.
But howling I become an ever more un-
heard person.

I need a hundred more of you to make a likelihood.
The mirror's not convincing-- that at-best in-
ferred person.

As time's revealing gets revolting, I start looking out.
Look in and what you see is one unholy
blurred person.

The only cure for birth one doesn't love to contemplate.
Better to be an unsung song, an unoc-
curred person.

McHugh, you'll be the death of me -- each self and second studied!
Addressing you like this, I'm halfway to the
third person.

34

my father moved through dooms of love
through sames of am through haves of give,
singing each morning out of each night
my father moved through depths of height

this motionless forgetful where
turned at his glance to shining here;
that if (so timid air is firm)
under his eyes would stir and squirm

newly as from unburied which
floats the first who, his april touch
drove sleeping selves to swarm their fates
woke dreamers to their ghostly roots

and should some why completely weep
my father’s fingers brought her sleep:
vainly no smallest voice might cry
for he could feel the mountains grow.

Lifting the valleys of the sea
my father moved through griefs of joy;
praising a forehead called the moon
singing desire into begin

joy was his song and joy so pure
a heart of star by him could steer
and pure so now and now so yes
the wrists of twilight would rejoice

keen as midsummer’s keen beyond
conceiving mind of sun will stand,
so strictly (over utmost him
so hugely) stood my father’s dream

his flesh was flesh his blood was blood:
no hungry man but wished him food;
no cripple wouldn’t creep one mile
uphill to only see him smile.

Scorning the Pomp of must and shall
my father moved through dooms of feel;
his anger was as right as rain
his pity was as green as grain

septembering arms of year extend
less humbly wealth to foe and friend
than he to foolish and to wise 
offered immeasurable is

proudly and (by octobering flame
beckoned) as earth will downward climb,
so naked for immortal work
his shoulders marched against the dark

his sorrow was as true as bread:
no liar looked him in the head;
if every friend became his foe
he’d laugh and build a world with snow.

My father moved through theys of we,
singing each new leaf out of each tree
(and every child was sure that spring
danced when she heard my father sing)

then let men kill which cannot share,
let blood and flesh be mud and mire,
scheming imagine, passion willed,
freedom a drug that’s bought and sold

giving to steal and cruel kind,
a heart to fear, to doubt a mind,
to differ a disease of same,
conform the pinnacle of am

though dull were all we taste as bright,
bitter all utterly things sweet,
maggoty minus and dumb death
all we inherit, all bequeath

and nothing quite so least as truth
—i say though hate were why men breathe—
because my Father lived his soul
love is the whole and more than all

Instead, let it be the echo to every footstep
drowned out by rain, cripple the air like a name

flung onto a sinking boat, splash the kapok’s bark
through rot & iron of a city trying to forget

the bones beneath its sidewalks, then through
the refugee camp sick with smoke & half-sung

hymns, a shack rusted black & lit with Bà Ngoại’s
last candle, the hogs’ faces we held in our hands

& mistook for brothers, let it enter a room illuminated
with snow, furnished only with laughter, Wonder Bread

& mayonnaise raised to cracked lips as testament
to a triumph no one recalls, let it brush the newborn’s

flushed cheek as he’s lifted in his father’s arms, wreathed
with fishgut & Marlboros, everyone cheering as another

brown gook crumbles under John Wayne’s M16, Vietnam
burning on the screen, let it slide through their ears,

clean, like a promise, before piercing the poster
of Michael Jackson glistening over the couch, into

the supermarket where a Hapa woman is ready
to believe every white man possessing her nose

is her father, may it sing, briefly, inside her mouth,
before laying her down between jars of tomato

& blue boxes of pasta, the deep-red apple rolling
from her palm, then into the prison cell

where her husband sits staring at the moon
until he’s convinced it’s the last wafer

god refused him, let it hit his jaw like a kiss
we’ve forgotten how to give one another, hissing

back to ’68, Ha Long Bay: the sky replaced
with fire, the sky only the dead

look up to, may it reach the grandfather fucking
the pregnant farmgirl in the back of his army jeep,

his blond hair flickering in napalm-blasted wind, let it pin
him down to dust where his future daughters rise,

fingers blistered with salt & Agent Orange, let them
tear open his olive fatigues, clutch that name hanging

from his neck, that name they press to their tongues
to relearn the word live, live, live—but if

for nothing else, let me weave this deathbeam
the way a blind woman stitches a flap of skin back

to her daughter’s ribs. Yes—let me believe I was born
to cock back this rifle, smooth & slick, like a true

Charlie, like the footsteps of ghosts misted through rain
as I lower myself between the sights—& pray

that nothing moves.

                   THE POOL PLAYERS. 
                   SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL.

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

I skim sadness like fat off the surface
of cooling soup. Don't care about
metaphor but wish it would arrive
me. There’s a cool current of air
this hot day I want to ride.
I have no lover, not even my love.
I have no other, not even I.

—angel of crowning and angel of breaching, angel of leavening,
angel of grieving; angel of elbow, angel of bright, angel of terrible,
monster of terrible; music and terrible, a big small music and several
terrible thousand tremendous; blot everything out, the stars, blot
everything; stop saying broken, stop saying broken; angel of
broken, angel of broken, angel of broken, angel of broken; angel of
headlights, angel of soap, angel of telephone, hurry red telephone;
even if my mouth is closed, even if the song ends; soup, glove, milk,
chalk, raise the dead, finish the thought, cinderblock cinderblock;
monsters of terrible, raise your tusks; faucets of terrible, ignite the
aqueducts; the ghost of sleeping, the ghost of thieving, the ghost of
silence, the angel of silence; angel of silence, angel of silence, angel
of silence, angel of silence—

My parents took me to Red Lobster to tell me they were getting a
divorce. Parents always take you to Red Lobster when they need to
tell you something awful and important, like failure. They figure if
they’re going to ruin a restaurant for you, it should be somewhere
lame, like Red Lobster or Olive Garden. We went to Red Lobster.
They couldn’t bring themselves to say anything. I was confused. My
brother, visiting, offered to tell me. He told me. I didn’t take it well.
To calm me down, he tried to read “Macavity: The Mystery Cat” to
me while I was throwing things. He ruined it. We were supposed to
ruin Red Lobster. I tried to break a toy school bus that he had given
me but it was too well made and solid wood so I gave up. It’s not
that I don’t want to be your mom, it’s that I don’t want to be anyone’s
mom. You can call me Phyllis and we can work on being friends. When I get back. My father hired a housekeeper. She wasn’t a good cook but she made a lot of Mexican food, which I liked. The first time
she made albondigas, my father thought it was matzo ball soup
made by a crazy person. He accused her of being a crazy person.
He raised his voice and gripped the edge of the table to keep his
hands down, so that was ruined for me as well. She should have left
but she didn’t, she stuck around until my future stepmother entered
the competition for the slot in the kitchen and won. They took me
to Red Lobster to let me know they were getting married. I had
popcorn shrimp and nodded along. My mother sent me a postcard
with a picture of the Eiffel Tower, telling me how great things were.
It had domestic postage.

say it with your whole black mouth: i am innocent

& if you are not innocent, say this: i am worthy of forgiveness, of breath after breath

i tell you this: i let blue eyes dress me in guilt
walked around stores convinced the very skin of my palm was stolen

& what good has that brought me? days filled flinching
thinking the sirens were reaching for me

& when the sirens were for me
did i not make peace with god?

so many white people are alive because
we know how to control ourselves.

how many times have we died on a whim
wielded like gallows in their sun-shy hands?

here, standing in my own body, i say: the next time
they murder us for the crime of their imaginations

i don’t know what i’ll do.

i did not come to preach of peace
for that is not the hunted’s duty.

i came here to say what i can’t say
without my name being added to a list

what my mother fears i will say

                       what she wishes to say herself

i came here to say

i can’t bring myself to write it down

sometimes i dream of pulling a red apology
from a pig’s collared neck & wake up crackin up

           if i dream of setting fire to cul-de-sacs
           i wake chained to the bed

i don’t like thinking about doing to white folks
what white folks done to us

when i do
                      can’t say

          i don’t dance

o my people

          how long will we

reach for god

          instead of something sharper?

          my lovely doe

with a taste for meat

          take

the hunter

          by his hand

& we say to her
             what have you done with our kin you swallowed?

& she says
             that was ages ago, you’ve drunk them by now

& we don’t understand

& then one woman, skin dark as all of us
             walks to the water’s lip, shouts Emmett, spits

&, surely, a boy begins
              crawling his way to shore

          Count these number of things you call mine. This is the distance between
          you and enlightenment.
                    —Swami Satchidananda.

                        (for Jenny)


my pillow

my shirt

my house

my supper

my tooth

my money

my kite

my job

my bagel

my spatula

my blanket

my arm

my painting

my fountain pen

my desk

my room

my turn

my book

my hopelessness

my wallet

my print

my sock

my toe

my stamp

my introduction

my luggage

my plan

my mistake

my monkey

my friend

my penis

my anger

my expectation

my pencil

my pain

my poster

my fear

my luggage tag

my eyes

my rainment

my wash

my opinion

my fat

my sleeplessness

my love

my basket

my lunch

my game

my box

my drawer

my cup

my longing

my blotter

my distraction

my underpants

my papers

my wish

my despair

my erasure

my plantation

my candy

my thoughtfulness

my forbearance

my gracelessness

my courage

my crying

my hat

my pocket

my dirt

my body

my sex

my scarf

my solidarity

my hope

my spelling

my smile

my gaze

my helplessness

my quilt

my reply

my enemy

my records

my letter

my gait

my struggle

my spirit

my cut

my thorn

my demise

my dream

my plate

my pit

my hollow

my blindness

my clinging

my projection

my teacher

my homework

my housework

my responsibility

my guilt

my relaxation

my boat

my crew

my peanut butter

my mill

my man

my hopelessness

my fooling

my sweet

my terror

my programme

my judgement

my disguise

my distress

my ladle

my soup

my mother

my basin

my pleat

my cheddar

my ownership

my enmity

my thought

my encyclopedia

my property

my formula

my infidelity

my discretion

my decision

my delusion

my deduction

my derision

my destitution

my delinquincy

my belt

my eroica

my junk

my jealousy

my remorse

my strength

my vision

my world

my fantasy

my anger

my determination

my refusal

my commitment

my insanity

my verbosity

my austerity

my androgeny

my defiance

my insistence

my emastication

my arousal

my mystification

my obscuraration

my ejaculation

my prostration

my wontonness

my cigarette

my belief

my uncertainty

my cat

my penetration

my insight

my obsolescence

my sleeping bag

my temptation

my dedication

my ball

my court

my kidney

my razor

my way

my tissue

my inadequacy

my own

my recorder

my song

my knack

my perception

my will

my canoe

my billiard ball

my content

my cassette

my voice

my sight

my knowledge

my bowels

my beard

my child

my lethargy

my nerve

my incredulity

my banana

my ink

my refrigerator

my car

my change

my pupil

my hair

my tongue

my tenderness

my star

my skill

my persona

my popularity

my pickle

my pinto

my window

my remembrance

my munificance

my country

my fragility

my visit

my longevity

my curtness

my incomparability

my sarcasm

my sincerity

my bed

my bed table

my table top

my bar mitzvah

my laughter

my scorn

my heartache

my sandwich

my call

my loss

my wit

my charm

my jest

my undoing

my practice

my piano lesson

my rage

my toe

my tattoo

my turtledove

my fly swatter

my vest

my notebook

my pocketbook

my sketchbook

my repulsion

my tea cup

my taste

my bag

my handbag

my bike

my jay

my roll

my dear

my milk

my closet

my slacks

my hoist

my ennui

my analysis

my language

my fortune

my vagueness

my mint

my limit

my import

my inference

my affectation

my affection

my insolence

my solitude

my memory

my bottle

my history

my ability

my adobe

my mission

my likeness

my misery

my solipsism

my omission

my regression

my opera

my penicillin

my resentment

my future

my understanding

my apricots

my holiday

my umbrella

my favorite

my mood

my side

my seat

my figment

my contour

my sky

my rainbow

my god

my mask

my reflection

my blessing

my light

my time

my epoxy

my drum

my hammer

my grease

my sand

my story

my top

my past

my mark

my depth

my garden

my silence

my speech

my selfishness

my hunger

my allowance

my letter

my massage

my derision

my epoch

my space

my land

my plentitude

my perversity

my poverty

my transgression

my exultation

my lack

my lustre

my beatude

my remission

my encantation

my white

my pulse

my creation

my grace

my object

my sum

my contumely

my gloom

my idea

my chart

my circumference

my gravity

my polarity

my distance

my eyelid

my planting

my separation

my id

my art

my death

my stand

my preparation

my heart

my life

my impression

my grave

my graciousness

my marrow

my heaven

my appearance

my olive oil

my flake

my self

my porridge

my mind

my function

my nakedness

my illumination

my freedom

my charity

my rose

my pallour

my pomp

my pajamas

my pity

my posing

my prayer

my dawn

my ocean

my tide

my underarm

my spectacle

my drifting

my ground

my body

my angels

my worship

my dew

my hobbey horse

my customer

my bread

my faith

my lies

my care

my restlessness

my sunflower

my weariness

my age

my existence

my sense

my backache

my pie

my thanks

my numbness

my sweeping

my inspiration

my token

my pond

my brillo

my squint

my pound

my rock

my critique

my aplomb

my portrait

my view

my rocking chair

my sisters

my demands

my gumdrops

my word

^{for Can}

I love the slow, tender
hooved gallop behind my left
nipple & how it turns me
into less a prisoner; prisoner
once, now a man less burdened 
by time. I love the rust & callous, the half
of it that makes me weep.
I love my lashes like scimitars,
the scar above my left eye
shaped by a fallen tree branch
& staring too long at the sun. I love
how g-d outlasts belief. I love 
the tooth chipped sliding along
the stone of a mango; 
the brokenness my body coupling 
with hers won’t fashion. I love 
the ridge that parts my bald head.
The days of whisky pickling
my liver. I love eleven rings
on my fingers. The two moons
on each fingernail. I love
all my eclipses. How my history 
begs for song from crackheads 
& soothsayers. I love this prayer,
this sin-eater or ghost or madman
humming to my soul. I love discursive 
& juxtaposition & the alchemy turning 
words into the only parachutes 
I long for. This body long been 
a troubled river. I love the storm. 
The weary. The thousand wild
cicadas. I love every invention,
every windmill turned monster.
I love how I know the deluge; 
how most likely I shall see it coming; 
or if, the empty of its absence. I love 
these two livers. This sac of humor,
this broken vinyl scratched
& spinning, & that one paladin
who refuses to let me be lonely.

in the backseat, my sons laugh & tussle,

far from Tamir’s age, adorned with his

complexion & cadence, & already warned

about toy pistols, though my rhetoric

ain’t about fear, but dislike—about

how guns have haunted me since I first gripped

a pistol; I think of Tamir, twice-blink

& confront my weeping’s inadequacy, how

some loss invents the geometry that baffles.

The Second Amendment—cold, cruel,

a constitutional violence, a ruthless

thing worrying me still, should be it predicts

the heft in my hand, arm sag, burdened by

what I bear: My bare arms collaged

with wings as if hope alone can bring

back a buried child. A child, a toy gun,

a blue shield’s rapid rapid rabid shit. This

is how misery sounds: my boys

playing in the backseat juxtaposed against

a twelve-year-old’s murder playing

in my head. My tongue cleaves to the roof

of my mouth, my right hand has forgotten.

This is the brick & mortar of the America

that murdered Tamir & may stalk the laughter

in my backseat. I am a father driving

his Black sons to school & the death

of a Black boy rides shotgun & this

could be a funeral procession, the death

a silent thing in the air, unmentioned—

because mentioning death invites taboo:

if you touch my sons the blood washed

away from the concrete must, at some

point, belong to you, & not just to you, to

the artifice of justice that is draped like a blue

g-d around your shoulders, the badge that

justifies the echo of the fired pistol; taboo:

the thing that says freedom is a murderer’s body

mangled & disrupted by my constitutional

rights come to burden, because the killer’s mind

refused the narrative of a brown child, his dignity,

his right to breathe, his actual fucking existence,

with all the crystalline brilliance I saw when

my boys first reached for me. This world best

invite more than story of the children bleeding

on crisp falls days, Tamir’s death must be more

than warning about recklessness & abandoned

justice & white terror’s ghost—& this is

why I hate it all, the protests & their counters,

the Civil Rights attorneys that stalk the bodies

of the murdered, this dance of ours that reduces

humanity to the dichotomy of the veil. We are



not permitted to articulate the reasons we might

yearn to see a man die. A mind may abandon

sanity. What if all I had stomach for was blood?

But history is no sieve & sanity is no elixir

& I am bound to be haunted by the strength

that lets Tamir’s father, mother, kinfolk resist

the temptation to turn everything they see

into a grave & make home the series of cells

that so many brothers already call their tomb.

At two a.m., without enough spirits

spilling into my liver to know 

to keep my mouth shut, my youngest

learned of years I spent inside a box: a spell,

a kind of incantation I was under; not whisky,

but History: I robbed a man. This, months

before he would drop bucket after bucket

on opposing players, the entire bedraggled

bunch five & six & he leaping as if

every lay-up erases something. That’s how

I saw it, my screaming-coaching-sweating

presence recompense for the pen. My father

has never seen me play ball is part of this.

My oldest knew, told of my crimes by

a stranger. Tell me we aren’t running

towards failure is what I want to ask my sons,

but it is two in the a.m. The oldest has gone off

to dream in the comfort of his room, the youngest

despite him seeming more lucid than me,

just reflects cartoons back from his eyes.

So when he tells me, Daddy it’s okay, I know

what’s happening is some straggling angel,

lost from his pack finding a way to fulfill his

duty, lending words to this kid who crawls

into my arms, wanting, more than stories

of my prison, the sleep that he fought while

I held court at a bar with men who knew

that when the drinking was done,

the drinking wouldn’t make the stories

we brought home any easier to tell.

What’s happened to the poem as poem, Sneaky Pete?
What’s happened to the poem as poem?

            It’s crossing the Pacific
            In an underwater sky lab,
            In a cute little butane box
            ln a gizmo way down there.

            And the shitty air smells pretty
            To us old-time gringos,
            But our loop-the-loop-the-loop biplane
            Isn’t used to the tundra.

            So push a little harder
            Till the gizmo acts frisky
            With multi-colored fissures
            That widen as you walk.

     Rush-hour joggers brush against me
     Whispering of nightmarish accessories.

What’s happened to the poem as poem, Sneaky Pete?
What’s happened to the poem as poem?

            It’s dangling from a black hole
            In a Golden Oldie time warp,
            In a fun little gunnysack
            In a doodad way up here.

     Yin. The cute die in summer.
     Yang. Dark out and the curtain’s stuck.

There’s a Papa Doc sunset
On my “That’s All, Folks!” burnoose.
No touchee! Its naked loins
Turn young lungs puce.

Jes’ keep your lips on the siphon, hon.
I’m movin’ back to town.

Back where the poem as poem’s gone,
Back where the poem’s gone.
Back where the poem as poem’s gone.
Back where the poem’s gone.

that one time in the ’98 NBA finals & in praise of one man’s hand on the waist of another’s & in praise of the ways we guide our ships to the shore of some brief & gilded mercy I touch my fingers to the hips of this vast & immovable grief & push once more & who is to say really how much weight was behind Jordan’s palm on that night in Utah & on that same night one year earlier the paramedics pulled my drowning mother from the sheets where she slept & they said it must have felt like a whole hand was pushing down on her lungs & I spent the whole summer holding my breath in bed until the small black spots danced on the ceiling & I am sorry that there is no way to describe this that is not about agony or that is not about someone being torn from the perch of their comfort & on the same night a year before my mother died Jordan wept on the floor of the United Center locker room after winning another title because it was father’s day & his father went to sleep on the side of a road in ’93 & woke up a ghost & there is no moment worth falling to our knees & galloping towards like the one that sings our dead into the architecture & so yes for a moment in 1998 Michael Jordan made what space he could on the path between him & his father’s small & breathing grace

& so yes,

there is an ocean between us the length of my arm & I have built nothing for you that can survive it

& from here I am close enough to be seen but not close enough to be cherished

& from here, I can see every possible ending before we even touch.

If I could be brave enough and live long enough I could crawl inside the life of every man, woman and child in America. After I had gone within them I could be born out of them. I could become something the like of which has never been seen before. We would see then what America is like.