You want to know where you come from.

Aquí la noche da vueltas lentas

un zopilote
       negro e inmenso

The night circles you
             with its many eyes of fire.

Below you the ground
      is a vast accumulation.

You scry into an emptiness
                          where everything blinks back,

              a thousand bodies of memory
buzzing through darkness,

                                                   a great swarm
that descends, eating the violets, lilies, aguacates . . .

            All reflections consumed, the eclipse cuts even
your shadow.
                         You are the lost daughter of Xibalba.

Can’t you see the scythe
                                         swinging from your footsteps,

                            a thousand deaths in every direction?

^{in order of recovery}

book 1987
notice:
even when i say i—
i do not speak singularly.
more like singularity.
we be chorusing
through the course
of the world. more
like multiplicity. like
assemblage. there’s a reason
why when i speak, people say i
sound just like my mama.
because my mama-n-em
is speaking in me
& through me & with me.
yes. before my tongue
causes undue harm
may i remember that it is my mama-
n-em speaking with me.

book 27
besides if you’re so worried about
knowing what you cannot know now,
how can you know what i need
you to know in this moment,
which is that i’m tired. &
my tongue is sore. my spirit aches.
& i want to know. can you
fit me right there? right there
in the crest of your arm? can i rest
here? please. let’s keep in touch.
don’t let me lose
touch.

When I say But mother, Black or not Black,
Of course we are polyethnic, your look does not change
Though it does harden, a drying clay bust
Abandoned or deliberately incomplete,
All the features carved in
Except the eyes. What I’m trying –
I mean – You are an Arab, yes,
By culture, by language, and in part by blood; by blood
You are also Black African – and when, then, I say
And probably a fair amount of European, too – the lights,
Though we’re standing at the corner of 195th and Jerome,

Turn up somehow

Tracing an outline of you onto the armory’s sharp red brick, the El
Barreling up from the tunnel like a surge of magma reaching
For air and as I wait for it to pass so that you can
Hear me again, so that I can hear myself at last
Say But here, for me… Don’t you see – ?
Your face hangs on the fair of fair amount – heavy drops
Of oil, or old rain, falling onto us from the tracks – almost willing away
The layer of long-dead men flattened onto it, and the desperate
Rest of you, until I say with my looking
Through the unbearable human noise, My sweet selfless mother, it is
Fine, it is fine. For us here now I will be the first of our line.

^{Answers crowdsourced from the author’s Instagram. Italics denote direct quotes.}

Absent parent(s) 
and the man who made me 

mistrust every man after. 

I haven’t earned it yet—
what is love if not a salary? 

The sweet treat we get 

for being demure.
It feels too selfish,

too vulgar, unladylike 

to gorge myself
on the moist cake of it. 

I’ve got bad credit, 

a prettier sibling, a rank 
history of mistakes,

each one more foul 

than the last. The timing
was all wrong. 

The timing was right 

but I was afraid 
of losing it.

I am disorganized.

My brain is broken, 
and it was stuck on something 

I thought was love.

I’ve spit out it before
just to prove that I can.

I believe I am ugly.

and in the end, 
it’s just easier this way,

familiar as a callous, 

tongued over like 
a cracked tooth:

suffering feels cleaner, 

because if I start to believe
I actually deserve love,

I’d have to find 

unacceptable all 
those incapable of 

giving it.