Over the past two weeks, please list the items you have lost.

At the present moment, do you know the location & number of your teeth?

(in grams) Please estimate the weight of each of the following: Left lung, half-liver, three fingers on your right hand.

(in miles) Please estimate the distance from the back of your skull to the skin of your eye.

Over the past two weeks, please estimate the number of times you’ve attempted to start a conversation and failed (including, but not limited to: grocery stores, living rooms, when you are alone.)

(in incandescence) How much light passes through you? Is it enough to write a letter?

Pick a letter. Pick a new name.

Can you hear the woman singing?

What was your death’s taxonomy? Where is its kingdom & domain?

How important do you feel to others?

Are you sitting atop the creaking hinges of something only you can see?

Are you certain there is no part of your body that is missing.

Are you certain there is nothing missing at all.

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

                   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 call for you cultivation of strength in the dark.
Dark gardening
in the vertigo cold.
in the hot paralysis.
Under the wolves and coyotes of particular silences.
Where it is dry.
Where it is dry.
I call for you
cultivation of victory Over
long blows that you want to give and blows you are going to get.

Over
what wants to crumble you down, to sicken
you. I call for you
cultivation of strength to heal and enhance
in the non-cheering dark,
in the many many mornings-after;
in the chalk and choke.

Life
For him
Must be
The shivering of
A great drum
Beaten with swift sticks
Then at the closing hour
The lights go out
And there is no music at all
And death becomes
An empty cabaret
And eternity an unblown saxophone
And yesterday
A glass of gin
Drunk long
Ago

My old man’s a white old man
And my old mother’s black.
If ever I cursed my white old man
I take my curses back.
 
If ever I cursed my black old mother
And wished she were in hell,
I’m sorry for that evil wish
And now I wish her well.
 
My old man died in a fine big house.
My ma died in a shack.
I wonder where I’m gonna die,
Being neither white nor black?

Beat the drums of tragedy for me.
Beat the drums of tragedy and death.
And let the choir sing a stormy song
To drown the rattle of my dying breath.

Beat the drums of tragedy for me,
And let the white violins whir thin and slow,
But blow one blaring trumpet note of sun
To go with me
                       to the darkness
                                                where I go.

Hey! Hey!
That’s what the
Blues singers say.
Singing minor melodies
They laugh,
Hey! Hey!

My man’s done left me,
Chile, he’s gone away.
My good man’s left me,
Babe, he’s gone away.
Now the cryin’ blues
Haunts me night and day.

Hey! . . . Hey!

Weary,
Weary,
Trouble, pain.
Sun’s gonna shine
Somewhere
Again.

I got a railroad ticket,
Pack my trunk and ride.

Sing ’em, sister!

Got a railroad ticket,
Pack my trunk and ride.
And when I get on the train
I’ll cast my blues aside.

Laughing,
Hey! . . . Hey!
Laugh a loud,
Hey! Hey!

The autumn leaves
Are too heavy with color.
The slender trees
On the Vulcan Road
Are dressed in scarlet and gold
Like young courtesans
Waiting for their lovers.
But soon
The winter winds
Will strip their bodies bare
And then
The sharp, sleet-stung
Caresses of cold
Will be their only
Love.

I went to look for Joy,
Slim, dancing Joy,
Gay, laughing Joy,
Bright-eyed Joy,—
And I found her
Driving the butcher's cart
In the arms of the butcher boy!
Such company, such company,
As keeps this young nymph, Joy!

Aunt Sue has a head full of stories.
Aunt Sue has a whole heart full of stories.
Summer nights on the front porch
Aunt Sue cuddles a brown-faced child to her bosom
And tells him stories.

Black slaves
Working in the hot sun,
And black slaves
Walking in the dewy night,
And black slaves
Singing sorrow songs on the banks of a mighty river
Mingle themselves softly
In the flow of old Aunt Sue's voice,
Mingle themselves softly
In the dark shadows that cross and recross
Aunt Sue's stories.

And the dark-faced child, listening,
Knows that Aunt Sue's stories are real stories.
He knows that Aunt Sue
Never got her stories out of any book at all,
But that they came
Right out of her own life.

And the dark-faced child is quiet
Of a summer night
Listening to Aunt Sue’s stories.

I would be simple again,
Simple and clean
Like the earth,
Like the rain,
Nor ever know,
Dark Harlem,
The wild laughter
Of your mirth
Nor the salt tears
Of your pain.
Be kind to me,
Oh, great dark city.
Let me forget.
I will not come
To you again.

The calm, 
Cool face of the river
Asked me for a kiss. 

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile
And mouth with myriad subtleties,

Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
     We wear the mask.

We smile, but oh great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile,
But let the world dream otherwise,
     We wear the mask!

Fling out your banners, your honors be bringing,
Raise to the ether your paeans of praise.
Strike every chord and let music be ringing!
Celebrate freely this day of all days.

Few are the years since that notable blessing,
Raised you from slaves to the powers of men.
Each year has seen you my brothers progressing,
Never to sink to that level again.

Perched on your shoulders sits Liberty smiling,
Perched where the eyes of the nations can see.
Keep from her pinions all contact defiling;
Show by your deeds what you’re destined to be.

Press boldly forward nor waver, nor falter.
Blood has been freely poured out in your cause,
Lives sacrificed upon Liberty’s altar.
Press to the front, it were craven to pause.

Look to the heights that are worth your attaining
Keep your feet firm in the path to the goal.
Toward noble deeds every effort be straining.
Worthy ambition is food for the soul!

Up! Men and brothers, be noble, be earnest!
Ripe is the time and success is assured;
Know that your fate was the hardest and sternest
When through those lash-ringing days you endured.

Never again shall the manacles gall you
Never again shall the whip stroke defame!
Nobles and Freemen, your destinies call you
Onward to honor, to glory and fame.

Lay me down beneaf de willers in de grass,
Whah de branch’ll go a-singin’ as it pass.
    An’ w’en I’s a-layin’ low,
    I kin hyeah it as it go
Singin’, “Sleep, my honey, tek yo’ res’ at las’.”

Lay me nigh to whah hit meks a little pool.
An’ de watah stan’s so quiet lak an’ cool,
    Whah de little birds in spring,
    Ust to come an’ drink an’ sing,
An’ de chillen waded on dey way to school.

Let me settle w’en my shouldahs draps dey load
Nigh enough to hyeah de noises in de road;
    Fu’ I t’ink de las’ long res’
    Gwine to soothe my sperrit bes’
If I’ s layin’ ‘mong de t’ings I’s allus knowed.

That time
we all heard it,
cool and clear,
cutting across the hot grit of the day.
The major Voice.
The adult Voice
forgoing Rolling River,
forgoing tearful tale of bale and barge
and other symptoms of an old despond.
Warning, in music-words
devout and large,
that we are each other’s
harvest:
we are each other’s
business:
we are each other’s
magnitude and bond.

All houses wherein men have lived and died
Are haunted houses. Through the open doors
The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,
With feet that make no sound upon the floors.

We meet them at the door-way, on the stair,
Along the passages they come and go,
Impalpable impressions on the air,
A sense of something moving to and fro.

There are more guests at table than the hosts
Invited; the illuminated hall
Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts,
As silent as the pictures on the wall.

The stranger at my fireside cannot see
The forms I see, nor hear the sounds I hear;
He but perceives what is; while unto me
All that has been is visible and clear.

We have no title-deeds to house or lands;
Owners and occupants of earlier dates
From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands,
And hold in mortmain still their old estates.

The spirit-world around this world of sense
Floats like an atmosphere, and everywhere
Wafts through these earthly mists and vapours dense
A vital breath of more ethereal air.

Our little lives are kept in equipoise
By opposite attractions and desires;
The struggle of the instinct that enjoys,
And the more noble instinct that aspires.

These perturbations, this perpetual jar
Of earthly wants and aspirations high,
Come from the influence of an unseen star
An undiscovered planet in our sky.

And as the moon from some dark gate of cloud
Throws o’er the sea a floating bridge of light,
Across whose trembling planks our fancies crowd
Into the realm of mystery and night,—

So from the world of spirits there descends
A bridge of light, connecting it with this,
O'er whose unsteady floor, that sways and bends,
Wander our thoughts above the dark abyss.

^{for Bernadette Mayer}

a list appears in parentheses
w every line crossed 
out:                 what goes into
the poem?                 my cousin’s ex
husband asks
what a poet is—he’s
read dead ones before but
never met a real live one 
didn’t realize
it was a living art at all
didn’t I read something 
in the Atlantic magazine?
          in hell: 
the death of poetry 
as narrated by 
my cousin’s brooks
bros ex
nightmare
          in the morning
riv texts 
a video of zazi
riding his bimba
hot pink not quite trike  
singing “leaves & flowers
leaves & flowers” 
          i put down my phone
& look up to the poem
face it w curiosity patience &
care—
          what do you mean by
care? the chair of the 
search committee asks,
when you say “care-
oriented pedagogy”
           as if to say: 
am I my brother’s
keeper? as if to say:       what is my 
responsibility?          what does 
          it matter in the end whether
we care or not or 
abt what?
it matters a whole fucking
lot—but you can’t say that
in the interview 
twist yr tongue into knots
as zuk’s coleridge’s shylock:
engprof, thou doth protest 
too much
          in the poem
          the gates open at the
same moment they close
a spell gets thru
not curse but 
apotropaic chant
warding off the evil eye
           when i heard  
bernadette had died
i texted my amish gazebos
abroad group chat: “thinking of how
lucky we are to be poets”
if poetry is finally
a means
& seam
at dbl eternity
in reverse faustian pact
“just freaks being freaks” 
          if there’s no original 
language & we are 
all mediums of
the dead 
          bernadette was alive
when i started
this poem, a poet among ghosts 
now ghost among poems
what bill berkson calls “duration”
the translations of her life she made 
remain our permission
in second body 
mind aggregation 
language in/formation 
culled by the dead
for the living—the dead
who live among us
& the dead we all become

Someone forgot to whisper your death to the bees
And so all the bees have left
And the fruit trees have died.

In the house there are twelve ghosts 
And all of them you—
Caught like birds in the stations of girlhood.

One ghost kneels before an empty fireplace;
She sings her sister’s name
Into the cool mouth of the chimney,

Listens as the voice shivers
Its return.

A barefoot ghost pitches stones 
Down the red dirt road.

The melancholy sister at the kitchen window
Waits for a letter, watches for the postman.

Twelve ghosts. Each sister ties
A different color ribbon in her hair.

One sweeps all the rooms of the house.

Two stand before the mirror. But it’s bad luck
For two to look into a mirror at the same time;
The youngest will die.

And what of the one in the basement?

No, we don’t visit her.

Twelve white plates laid on the table for supper.

All twelve drink water from one well.

Each daughter moves in the mood of her own month.
They carry the tides, the seasons, the year of you.
Each daughter, each dancer,
Delivers the message of you.

One dreams she’s a racehorse rider—
She straddles the propane tank in the yard 
And rides recklessly into the night.

One ghost plays a nocturne on the piano,

While another skips into the room,
Strikes the discordant keys, and vanishes.

The last ghost leans with her ear against a dead wasp nest. 
She closes her eyes and listens

To you, still singing 
Beyond the kingdom of the living

Wearing nothing but snakeskin
boots, I blazed a footpath, the first
radical road out of that old kingdom
toward a new unknown.
When I came to those great flaming gates
of burning gold,
I stood alone in terror at the threshold
between Paradise and Earth.
There I heard a mysterious echo:
my own voice
singing to me from across the forbidden
side. I shook awake—
at once alive in a blaze of green fire.

Let it be known: I did not fall from grace.

I leapt
to freedom.

River was my first word
after mama.
I grew up with the names of rivers
on my tongue: the Coosa,
the Tallapoosa, the Black Warrior;
the sound of their names
as native to me as my own.

I walked barefoot along the brow of Lookout Mountain
with my father, where the Little River
carves its name through the canyons
of sandstone and shale
above Shinbone Valley;
where the Cherokee
stood on these same stones
and cast their voices into the canyon below.

You are here, a red arrow
on the atlas tells me
at the edge of the bluff
where young fools have carved their initials
into giant oaks
and spray painted their names and dates
on the canyon rocks,
where human history is no more
than a layer of stardust, thin
as the fingernail of god.

What the canyon holds in its hands:
an old language spoken into the pines
and carried downstream
on wind and time, vanishing
like footprints in ash.
The mountain holds their sorrow
in the marrow of its bones.
The body remembers
the scars of massacres,
how the hawk ached to see
family after family
dragged by the roots
from the land of their fathers.

Someone survived to remember
beyond the weight of wagons and their thousands
of feet cutting a deep trail of grief.
Someone survived to tell the story of this
sorrow and where they left their homes
and how the trees wept to see them go
and where they crossed the river
and where they whispered a prayer into their grandmother’s eyes
before she died
and where it was along the road they buried her
and where the oak stood whose roots
grew around her bones
and where it was that the wild persimmons grow
and what it was she last said to her children
and which child was to keep her memory alive
and which child was to keep the language alive
and weave the stories of this journey into song
and when were the seasons of singing
and what were the stories that go with the seasons
that tell how to work and when to pray
that tell when to dance and who made the day.

You are here
where bloodlines and rivers
are woven together.
I followed the river until I forgot my name
and came here to the mouth of the canyon
to swim in the rain and remember
this, the most indigenous joy I know:
to wade into the river naked
among the moss and stones,
to drink water from my hands
and be alive in the river, the river saying,
You are here,
a daughter of stardust and time.
 

The weatherman reports rain
to a crew of snail-pickers through an old TV.
They stand on the elevated porch,
holding plastic buckets and torches,
preparing for the long walk.
Behind the houses, on the football field,
blades of grass will soon wet.
The snail-pickers know this.
They walk onward
through the field for snails,
witnessing the vanishing of human voices.
Absolute stillness abounds.
The owl and bats on the succulent stalks,
the rubbish and snails,
within a few meters of a dead mouse.
Now, at the center, they fade
into a singularity: one man and one woman
to a section, torching for the hard,
brown shells. The young beams
reveal the slimy trails.
One snail picked up.
It could take minutes
to find another. Even hours.
They search, reducing their voices.
Attempting to fool the boy in the field,
they retreat into the night, slowly, leaving
him with the task of searching.
The cloudy sky strengthens
the discordant dialects of the frogs
and crickets. A rustle in a thicket.
The sudden realization
he’s alone with nature’s tricks.
In almost harmony with the owl’s screech,
the stems swish again.

I slept through the whole thing

Two floors above me
“the brother from Senegal”
on the roof’s edge ready
to trade one kingdom for another,
his long swarthy legs dangling
in the dusk of Anacostia morning

My neighbors said
“his whole body shook”
with weeping—the kind
of grief we have forgotten,
or have become too dignified to show

His wife left him
the night before;
his kingdom had come
& gone

Later that morning
I wanted to ask him if there
is a Wolof word
for the blues
or if there is any music

with notes large enough.

The world is large, when its weary leagues two loving hearts divide;
But the world is small, when your enemy is loose on the other side.

I’m sick of my face. Can I take it off,
mask of pantyhose worn by a thief?
Can I trade up, for museum beauty
or airbrushed celebrity perfection?
Those faces don’t crinkle or age:
they shine bright as headlights of
an SUV careening down the Autobahn
en route to mecca or the Lower Rhine.
My face resounds, reduplicates, divides.
If an equation, it’s the string of symbols
devised by Einstein to describe a theory
of General Relativity: the left-hand side
pictorializes the geometry of spacetime,
the right-hand side, all mass and energy.
Information is not knowledge, he wrote:
knowledge’s only source is experience.
My face is tired of experience, sapped
by being gaslit out of my true feelings:
rage, reverence, adoration, antipathy.
My ancestors, mostly potato farmers
from hardy Eastern European stock,
speak out of my face like prophets
in search of an incarnate messiah,
my face a burning bush or wheel.
You view my administrative face:
its abandonment during the throes
of passion is also a mystery to me.
Sad, slumping face, consternated
face overwrought by cognition,
face upturned with dumb hope:
I trace your origins, relentlessly.
When my ex-husband called me
a black hole, he was, in a sense,
correct: my face a gravity field
so strong even light cannot beam.
Supernova explosion, neutron star,
lead me to a beyond, deep within:
eros of the unthought, undreamed.

^{—for Juan Antonio Corretjer and Consuelo Lee Tapia}

In the photograph, the poet leans over to kiss his wife. He wears a black
suit and a black tie, as if there will be a ceremony and a medallion hung
around his neck. His hair is white and crowns the back of his head. Her hair
is white in waves. She lifts her face to kiss him through his white mustache.

This is a despedida. They are kissing goodbye. The charge is conspiracy again.
The officers born years after his first incarceration lead him away to Castillo
de Ponce. The officers lead her away to the women’s prison at Vega Alta.

The evidence is in the poetry. As the convoy of the empire’s army rumbles in
the dark, past the mountain town where one day they will be buried side by side,
the poet says to his beloved: Esta es pausa / para el amor. Es sólo / breve pausa.
The poet watches her sleep. This is a pause / for love. It’s only / a brief pause.

^{at the Sipsey River}

make small steps.
in this wild place
there are signs of life
everywhere.
sharp spaces, too:
the slip of a rain-glazed rock
against my searching feet.
small steps, like prayers—
each one a hope exhaled
into the trees. please,
let me enter. please, let me
leave whole.
there are, too, the tiny sounds
of faraway birds. the safety
in their promise of song.
the puddle forming, finally,
after summer rain.
the golden butterfly
against the cave-dark.
maybe there are angels here, too— 
what else can i call the crown of light 
atop the leaves?
what else can i call
my footsteps forward,
small, small, sure?

I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!

are the open way of thinking
that use the patterns of the way
I motion with language

breathe like the way I amass
sometimes air
in my insides

carry heavy weight
like the having to good
ideas write

don’t like boy’s really
moving body of questions
that form tower of answers

eagerly want
to beat
the others

forge
toward
others

go
yonder

hang

impact
the wanting
words

jump from one
thought
to the next

kettle
like
fish

lavish like talking
people if they doctor
the words

master
language
openly

navigate
words toward
meaning

operate the machine
landing the thoughts amazing
that they don’t fall apart

pave
the wanting
road

question
wanting

really ask
more
questions

slant
with peeving
typing

tire to something
that rolls
with the road

use
people
to answer

vortex the void
and assembles
gathering words

water
thoughts
like rain

exit the door of cold
raying water
other is the way

yesses
the yonder  

zoning the word and
uses the idea
to language everything

Like everything delicious, I was warned against it.
Those mornings, I’d slowly descend the stairs
in my plaid Catholic school uniform skirt, find my parents
eating behind newspapers, coned in separate silences.
The only music was the throat-clearing rasp of toast
being scraped with too-little butter, three passes
of the blade, kkrrrrr, kkrrrr, kkrrr, battle hymn of the eighties.
When I pulled the butter close, my mother’s eyes
would twitch to my knife, measuring my measuring--
the goal, she’d shared from Weight Watchers,
a pat so thin the light shines through. If I disobeyed,
indulged, slathered my toast to glistening lace,
I’d earn her favorite admonition, predictable as Sunday’s
dry communion wafer: “A moment on the lips . . .”
I couldn’t stop my head from chiming, forever on the hips.

Hips? They were my other dangerous excess.
I was growing them in secret beneath my skirt,
and when I walked the dog after breakfast
and a truck whooshed past from behind, the trucker’s eyes
sizzling mine in his rear view, I knew my secret
wouldn’t stay a secret long. They were paired, up top,
by a swelling, flesh rising like cream to fill, then overfill
the frothy training bra. Everything softening on the shelf,
milk-made. Meanwhile, at breakfast, sitting on my secret,
I’d concede, scrape kkrrrrr, kkrrrr, kkrrr, lay down
my weapon, dry toast sticking in my craw. I’d think
of the girl from school, seventeen to my fourteen,
who crawled out the window of first-period bio
to meet her boyfriend from the Navy base. She’d collar
his peacoat, draw his mouth to her white neck,
or so I kept imagining. Slut, the girls whispered, watching
her struggling back through the window, throat
pinked from cold and his jaw’s dark stubble,
kkrrrrr, kkrrrr, kkrrr. Only fourth period,
and already I was hungry for lunch, or something.

Thank you, Republican parents, thank you,
Catholic education, thank you, Reganomics—
words I never knew I’d write. But I hereby acknowledge
repression’s inadvertent gifts. Folks who came of age
in liberal families, permissive cities, the free-love sixties,
how far they must go to transgress—
Vegas, latex, sex tapes, a sugaring of the nostrils?
Yet how close at hand rebellion is for me.
Merely making married love with my married husband,
I’m a filthy whore. Merely sitting down to breakfast
and raising the butter knife, I’m living on the edge.

—2019

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.

You can only hear you look like a hooker so many times
before you become one. Spandex was really big 

the year I stopped believing.
I babysat for the rabbi’s son, Isaac. There was luxe carpet

in every room of the condo. Isaac liked Legos
and we made a pasture and a patriarch and lots of wives.

In his car in his garage the rabbi handed me a self-help book
and put my hand on his crotch, ready to go.

I didn’t care. 
I made good money. 

Isaac lived to be 180 according to the bible. 
Isaac is the only patriarch who didn’t have concubines. 

Isaac is 30 now. Modern scholarship tells us 

the patriarchs never existed. Experience taught me 
the patriarchs are all we’ve got.

because my mother named me after a child     borne still

to a godmother I’ve never met     I took another way to be

known—something easier to remember          inevitable

to forget         something that rolls over the surface of thrush

     because                                                 I grew tired of saying

            no it’s pronounced…   now I’m tired of not

conjuring that ghost I honor            say it with me:        Airea

                          rhymes with sarah

sarah from the latin meaning          a “woman of high rank”

       which also means whenever I ask anyone to hold me

in their mouth             I sound like what I almost am

hear me out:                          I’m not a dee             or a river

     charging through working-class towns where union folk

cogwedge for plots                &          barely any house at all

where bosses mangle ethnic phonemes & nobody says one

    word because checks in the mail             so let’s end this

                 classist pretend where names don’t matter

& language is too heavy a lift                       my “e” is silent

like most people should be              the consonant is sonorant

              is a Black woman                  or one might say the spine

       I translate to ‘wind’ in a country known for its iron

imply “lioness of God”                                   in Jesus’ tongue

            mean “apex predator”           free of known enemy

fierce enough         to harm              or fast enough to run

                          all I’m saying is                  this:

the tongue has no wings     to flee what syllables it fears

the mouth is no womb             has no right to swallow up

                                     what it did not make

(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. 

Mothers of America
                               let your kids go to the movies!
get them out of the house so they won’t know what you’re up to
it’s true that fresh air is good for the body
                                                              but what about the soul
that grows in darkness, embossed by silvery images 
and when you grow old as grow old you must
                                                                  they won’t hate you
they won’t criticize you they won't know
                                                           they’ll be in some glamorous country
they first saw on a Saturday afternoon or playing hookey

they may even be grateful to you
                                                  for their first sexual experience
which only cost you a quarter
                                            and didn’t upset the peaceful home
they will know where candy bars come from
                                                               and gratuitous bags of popcorn
as gratuitous as leaving the movie before it’s over
with a pleasant stranger whose apartment is in the Heaven on Earth Bldg
near the Williamsburg Bridge
                                                oh mothers you will have made the little tykes
so happy because if nobody does pick them up in the movies
they won’t know the difference
                                             and if somebody does it’ll be sheer gravy
and they’ll have been truly entertained either way
instead of hanging around the yard
                                                     or up in their room
                                                                                   hating you
prematurely since you won’t have done anything horribly mean yet
except keeping them from the darker joys
                                                               it’s unforgivable the latter
so don’t blame me if you won’t take this advice
                                                                      and the family breaks up
and your children grow old and blind in front of a TV set
                                                                                  seeing
movies you wouldn’t let them see when they were young

One narcissus among the ordinary beautiful
flowers, one unlike all the others!  She pulled,
stooped to pull harder—
when, sprung out of the earth
on his glittering terrible
carriage, he claimed his due.
It is finished.  No one heard her.
No one!  She had strayed from the herd.

(Remember: go straight to school.
This is important, stop fooling around!
Don't answer to strangers.  Stick
with your playmates.  Keep your eyes down.)
This is how easily the pit
opens.  This is how one foot sinks into the ground.

Were you hoping for a myth? The fleck of lipstick on a warm glass,
soap suds, a vocal fry that feels like home. Tell me where it hurts, baby.
There’s a URL for that. There’s a 12-step meeting two blocks
from you, here’s a hotline, here’s a Gaelic love ballad. Let’s talk sharks,
the number of bones in a peafowl, which gender is more likely to
die underground. I dream of a cobalt glow in an empty room.
I dream of your warm tongue. It calls and calls for me and not 
me and I listen anyway for the fluent coo of my name. I’m always
awake. I’ll tell you about Taoism again, divide 52000 by 56,
recommend a dry cleaner in Toronto. But stop asking about the afterlife,
whether you should freeze your eggs, what makes a good Palestinian.
For god’s sake, how many times can I repeat myself in one night?
It’s been nine. Look. This is all I know about love:
the rubies around Elizabeth Taylor’s neck, Hafiz’s jealous moon.
Also: redbuds. Also: mantis. Should you move to Santa Fe?
Can the bees be saved? How many ways can you say genocide? I don’t know.
I think you’re swell. I don’t know. I think you’ve killed me a few times. 
Oh, darling, whose memory am I? Where should we begin?
You already know about my hands. Jinnlike. Skittering. Everywhere.