when we lose track of the person   not to be
confused with that democratic fetish
‘the individual’   when we lose track of that particle
that permeable pool of plasma
the person   and take human reality
to be a solid matter (most often
male) of people’s (often enough clotted
into mobs   often enough mobs of so-
called ‘democratic action’). . . Jesus
Christ let’s just call it conscious intention
lashed to the cleated post of mute
inheritance   we need to be very careful
in that situation   when persons are
pushed (ultimately at gunpoint)
to feel that they have nothing to
lose and that can feel (though most often
it tingles numbly) like freedom
but it’s not   freedom is never that
we must be ve-ry careful    more
careful than anyone can actually be  
because it’s dangerous when it feels
like anything’s possible
but nothing can happen   very
dangerous when it feels
like anything can be put immediately
on display but somehow
nothing can be revealed   to live
in a world (so-called) where
everything’s within reach but nothing
can be touched   maybe
it’s a terrible truth (quite possibly
a truth of parenthood) that for any one
thing to be known (or touched)
everything else must be complexly
felt   as if thru an infinitely
sensate dilation   pure aperture   maybe
that is the open and awestruck light of love
and it’s very simply never ever
simply just that   which is the spark of art
iculate speech   an S curve pulls parabolas
thru a syncro-mesh gearbox   a sudden break
in low clouds off the coast
and into a remorselessly gray sea
of eyes pours a silver sheen   a glistening pool of pain

I, heiress of red embers
the fiercest of which burn the uncareful hand

See my one great grandmother what
had the misfortune of disciplining her husband

who thought he could come upside her
head about something or other.

Without missing a beat, she, damn physics,
wield a cast iron pot against his head.

This same short, blunt arm would nurse
twelve children, the youngest only two years 

before her own death. She willed nothing
but her blood. Stout bodied women

with heavy wants and hands, hearts overripe
and prone to leaking. Mama on my grandmother’s side

held a shotgun aimed to the head of any white man 
come up the road. Papa would greet him with one of his own 

just as unfriendly and kind under her sharp shooting eye.
I’ve never held a loaded gun, too afraid I might

turn it on myself. They had Jesus and a wood
burning stove. What do I know about protecting

any body particularly my own? Things inherited,
things learnt, may singed palms pitch to know.

_{“white folks hear the blues come out, but they don’t know how it got there.” —ma rainey}

a timeline of music

went from drum call to call for freedom

from plucking on banjos to bondage on a ship

from djembes to django

then crash

on the soil of tobacco cotton sharecroppin

fingers

coarse as their hair

coarse as the lashes on their back

coarse as their pain.

harmonized in the key of trauma

traumatized to the harm of being a minor

looking for the freedom notes

slave song rebellion anthem

mapping north like a union soldiers bugle

same fingers

plucking strings of blues

and folk guitars

same fingers

plucking the tear soaked rope from their necks

who but us could unhinge a noose

and turn into an instrument

go through hell, and make gospel

like fire shut up in the bones of a burning cross

baptize themselves in a colored fountain

who but negroes could fry a jim crow

and feed a nation revolution

to the symphony of the iron-hand-bigot called america

the pop of gunshots and police batons like snare

snared justice in the teeth of police dogs

who but colored folk could find the rhythm

in a riot

make jazz out of jail

make a motown out of a march

in formation til the

the soul need a breakbeat

we bass-boom and crack walls

crack glass ceilings

crack babies born in a concrete existence

projects built like mausoleums

forced fed products of experimental

drugs gone viral

viruses gone viral

fame at the expense of an epidemic

[we] pump up the volume and the veins

who but blacks could use needles

to spin back the hands of time

and scratch

the surface of broken history

the one america tries to skip

who but descendants of slave

now only slave to the rhythm

could take generations of suffering

and make genres full of joy

and rising sounds like

black notes are the only reason music exist

how did it get there?!

we took the off-key we were given

remixed it into a resilient medley.

while they try to silence the notes

hit the notes

dead the notes

it is said you can kill a revolutionary

but can’t kill the revolution

when you are children of the drum

people can stop the hearts

but they can never stop the beat

The only legend I have ever loved is
the story of a daughter lost in hell.
And found and rescued there.
Love and blackmail are the gist of it.
Ceres and Persephone the names.
And the best thing about the legend is
I can enter it anywhere. And have.
As a child in exile in
a city of fogs and strange consonants,
I read it first and at first I was
an exiled child in the crackling dusk of
the underworld, the stars blighted. Later
I walked out in a summer twilight
searching for my daughter at bed-time.
When she came running I was ready
to make any bargain to keep her.
I carried her back past whitebeams
and wasps and honey-scented buddleias.
But I was Ceres then and I knew
winter was in store for every leaf
on every tree on that road.
Was inescapable for each one we passed. And for me.
                    It is winter
and the stars are hidden.
I climb the stairs and stand where I can see
my child asleep beside her teen magazines,
her can of Coke, her plate of uncut fruit.
The pomegranate! How did I forget it?
She could have come home and been safe
and ended the story and all
our heart-broken searching but she reached
out a hand and plucked a pomegranate.
She put out her hand and pulled down
the French sound for apple and
the noise of stone and the proof
that even in the place of death,
at the heart of legend, in the midst
of rocks full of unshed tears
ready to be diamonds by the time
the story was told, a child can be
hungry. I could warn her. There is still a chance.
The rain is cold. The road is flint-coloured.
The suburb has cars and cable television.
The veiled stars are above ground.
It is another world. But what else
can a mother give her daughter but such
beautiful rifts in time?
If I defer the grief I will diminish the gift.
The legend will be hers as well as mine.
She will enter it. As I have.
She will wake up. She will hold
the papery flushed skin in her hand.
And to her lips. I will say nothing.