^{We are mired in matter until we are not
            — Ralph Lemon}

I thought we were an archipelago 
each felt under our own finessed and gilded wing 
let’s make an assumption 
let’s make an assumption that            the lake has a bottom 
let’s make an assumption       that everyone will mourn 
let’s sack a hundred greenbacks 
for the sake of acknowledging they mean something 
what does it mean to have worth? 
who would dream to drain a lake? 
I spent my days staring into the eye of the Baltic 
it’s because I am also a body of water 
it’s not that onerous  
I’ve built a muscle memory  
it’s not that heavy 
let’s talk about erasure I mean 
that’s easy 
start with a word that you don’t like 
start with a people you didn’t know 
start with a neighborhood, rank 
start with any miasma dispersed 
let’s talk about burden 
let’s talk about burden for the weight 
it lends us 
let’s talk about supplication 
about my palms — uplift, patience 

let’s celebrate our substance  
subsistence in  
amber rivulets of stilllife 
constellations how you molded me  
country how we became it 
the longitude is a contested border  
my longest muscle I named  familiar 

Oft, when my lips I open to rehearse
Thy wondrous spell of wisdom, and of power,
And that my voice, and thy immortal verse,
On listening ears, and hearts, I mingled pour,
I shrink dismayed – and awful doth appear
The vain presumption of my own weak deed;
Thy glorious spirit seems to mine so near,
That suddenly I tremble as I read –
Thee an invisible auditor I fear:
Oh, if it might be so, my master dear!
With what beseeching would I pray to thee,
To make me equal to my noble task,
Succor from thee, how humbly would I ask,
Thy worthiest works to utter worthily.

         for Kenneka Jenkins and her mother

What is it about my mother’s face, a bright burn
when I think back, her teeth, her immaculate teeth

that I seldom saw or knew, her hair like braided
black liquorice. I am thinking of my mother’s face,

because she is like the mother in the news whose
daughter was found dead, frozen inside a hotel freezer.

My mother is this mourning mother who begged
the staff to search for her daughter, but was denied.

Black mothers are often seen pleading for their children,
shown stern and wailing, held back somehow by police

or caution tape—

a black mother just wants to see her baby’s body.
a black mother just wants to cover her baby’s body

with a sheet on the street. A black mother
leaves the coffin open for all the world to see,

and my mother is no different. She is worried
about seeing the last minutes of me: pre-ghost,

stumbling alone through empty hotel hallways
failing to find balance, searching for a friend,

a center, anyone, to help me home. Yes.
I’ve gotten into a van with strangers.

I’ve taken drugs with people that did not care
how hard or fast I smoked or blew.

But what did I know of Hayden? What did I know
of that poem besides my mother’s hands, her fist,

her prayers and premonitions? What did I know
of her disembodied voice hovering over the seams

of my life like the vatic song the whip-poor-will
makes when it can sense a soul dispersing?

Still. My mother wants to know where I am,
who I am with, and when will I land.

I get frustrated by her insistence on my safety
and survival. What a shame I am. I’m sorry, mom.

Some say Black love is different. Once,
I asked my mother why she always yelled

at me when I was little. She said I never listened
to her when she spoke to me in hushed tones

like a white mother would, meaning soft volume
is a privilege. Yeah, that’s right. I am using a stereotype

to say a louder thing. I am saying my mother
was screaming when she lost me in the mall once.

I keep hearing that voice everywhere I go.
I follow my name. The music of her rage sustains me.

The pale sound of jilgueros trilling in the jungle.
Abuelo rocks in his chair and maps the birds
in his head, practiced in the geometry of sound.
 
My uncle stokes the cabin’s ironblack stove
with a short rod. The flames that come are his
loves. I cook—chile panameño, coconut milk—
 
a recipe I’d wanted to try. Abuelo eats,
suppresses the color that builds in his cheek.
To him the chile is a flash of snake in the mud.
 
He asks for plain rice, beans. Tío hugs his father,
kneels in front of the fire, whispers away the dying
of his little flames. We soak rice until
 
the water clouds. On the television, a fiesta…
 
The person I am showing the poem to
stops reading. He questions the TV,
circles it with a felt pen. “This feels so
 
out of place in a jungle to me. Can you
explain to the reader why it’s there?”
For a moment, I can’t believe. 

You don’t think we have 1930s technology?
The poem was trying to talk about stereotype,
gentleness instead of violence for once.
 
But now I should fill the little room
of my sonnet explaining how we own a TV?
A shame, because I had a great last line—
 
there was a parade in it, and a dancing
horse like you wouldn’t believe.