aware of the weight that impedes momentum
aware of wind factor and traction
(to wish i were dead? easy. the one wish that
always comes true)
as the hum of unseen fellow runners
urges me on thru this brilliant fruitless flight
point of departure is a certainty
arrival a myth
as i streak along the beginning turning back on
itself again and again. my focus dead ahead
peering. to see if
this is the dark that precedes dawn
or the darkness before the dark
American Sonnet 12
after Robert Duncan
my earliest dreams linger/wronged spirits
who will not rest/dusky crows astride
the sweetbriar seek to fly the
orchard’s sky. is this the work i loved?
groves of perfect oranges and streets of stars
where the sad eyes of my youth
wander the atomic-age paradise
tasting
the blood of a stark and wounded puberty?
o what years ago? what rapture lost in white
heat of skin/walls that patina my heart’s
despair? what fear disturbs my quiet
night’s grazing? stampedes my soul?
o memory. i sweat the eternal weight of graves
American Sonnet 15
dear most important believer
on behalf of everyone i’d like to thank you
for your trust and loyalty. to recognize
you as among the sincerest of followers. i’m
pleased to personally welcome you to the many
privileges and benefits. you’ll enjoy exclusive
advantages unavailable to others. because you deserve
special attention. i’ve enclosed your emblems
of guaranteed earned recognition. please take a moment to
contemplate and admire them. we’ve gone to great lengths
to exceed your every expectation. if you have any questions
about a higher level, remember there is none. if
you feel you need extra recognition this is all there
is since it is special indication of your status
thank you for showing us your best
American Sonnet 16
—after Huey P. Newton
the clairvoyant activist ever ready to
face the consequences of his/her perceptions must
subsist on stubborn hope (D. Brutus) for maintenance
aids dogged determination to construct required change.
revolutionary homicide/suicide means awareness of
reality in combination with potential sociocentrism.
those ill-equipped to struggle against brutal powers risk
extinction. [to cooperate in the imprisoning of one’s own
people-psyche is reactionary homicide/suicide which will be
rewarded by ever-watchful scions of the oppressive belief
system. but to pretend to do so is to trick.] specific
group resistance of rampant narco/necromania may be
manifest in periodic eruptions of spontaneous civil
violence. It is imperative that visionaries see
war as ultimate service for resolution
American Sonnet 18
—after June Jordan
this is the place where all the lives
are planted in my eyes. black things writhe
on the ground. red things gush from
volcanic gaseous tremblings/become blood and light
mountains of flesh raging toward rapturous seas
where crowns of trees inspired by flame extol the night
(my abysmal hear compels the moon compels
wave upon wave. compels reason)
the tombs are fertile with sacred
rememberings. the ancient rhymes. the
disasters of couplings. the turbulent blaze of
greed’s agonies. shadows reaching for time and time
unraveling and undone.
sky river mother—your tongue plunders my mouth
American Sonnet 23
—after Akhmatova
here’s to my ruined curbless urban psyche/the spent
tempest fleeing the golden rain of cruel day
wandering star-starved punched-out bleached-blind
here’s to the poison i greedily consume as sustenance
to the killer humdrum of my life without fulfillment
my love’s isolation, my nation and me—our bickerings
i drink the cold ugly of funky negro divas who
cast me down their death-dealing amused eyes
delighting in my writhing/castration/made numb
in this world—made brutal made coarse made jealous of
they who have usurped and commodified god
here’s to
my uncompromising vision and to the young blood who
tells me i carry the broom like a cross
American Sonnet 24
i’m on uptime/have no resting place/cannot rest
constant strive constant drive
getting into bed is an act of creation. i’m putting
on weight and hope with unequaled relish—trapped twixt the
illusion of escape and the hallucination of release
i am the love wish of secret rapists/the men
who break before they enter
they fight to maintain the myths i die by
(when underthegun who has time to keep a war journal?)
in that blues pocket of need reed where sweet darkness
begins befogged in the snooze of mist, my legacy
the slave-soaked night wailings of misbegotten dreamers
beseeching the dead to rise once more—that fierce
hoodoo of humans consumed in the defiant flames of living
November’s Song
1
i am planetary with sugar & double
vision. the compulsive consumption of frustrated
power rings the Saturn of my system/the subsumed
wildness of a woman too long unembraced/underappreciated
erupts thru my skin, weeps & oozes salveless
nonspecific accusations leave me asplash
in grand & defensive speculations
stale odors of coriander & vanilla ill-shelved over summer
i slip into the flannel robe
of my adolescence,
raid the refrigerator of my tender
dramas. by a tiny pale amber cat’s eye
i reach for the butter-iced date & walnut cake
that gave me the runs for hours
therefore gave away my childish invasion.
i thirst for the cold white quench
of quarts of whole milk, downed under covert
layers of nylon & night to the rhythms of
Pop’s snores & Mom’s fantasies
coastal morning aromas of bacon toast coffee & poached eggs
(now that good arrives
i think
good arrives too late)
my compendium of losses i anticipate penning
as i gather each trace of wronged breath
2
a nesting starling arcs across
the path of walkers, flits into a bush
Pop’s memory plays tricks
we are waiting in the hospital one minute
herding cows thru Arkansas grasslands the next
then i’m with him on the passenger’s seat
as he tools moonlit avenues in the beige Hudson
conk-haired in pinstripes & broad lapels
rose pomade & another woman’s lipstick
working down his high white collar
the garage door lifts to reveal his world
of India-inked bronze bombshells basking
in bathing suits against the air-brushed palm-lined
/>
beach while bug-eyed wolves in bow ties & zoots
flick apple-red tongues, flip wigs, jump out of their socks
it’s a scrambled brains ’n egg thang
hot kitchens & loud laughs
the bets coming so fast no one can count
the hot haughty high-chested moments
when tan-toned promise flourished in smoke-toned niches
with a snap the spell lifts
pride shatters like a glass jaw
there’s a stinging with each removal of a stitch
in this future we are both old if i am the elder.
Pop’s long enwombed beneath that cheap beveled marble plaque
as black as my licorice heart
Letter to My Older Sister
she died before christening and, therefore
had no name, but i will gladly lend her one of mine
dear Georgiana,
Mama followed the stars in those days. do you
suppose she blames me for your death? and, too,
Papa’s mother died on my horizon. have your lives
been absorbed into mine and have i lived you well?
is that what she holds against me—your eternal
breathlessness? would she have loved me more
if you had lived? and if not more, then at
least without fear? Papa accepted me as his
altho too much his in my stubbornness. if your
death hurt him it must’ve been the lesser hurt.
as i’ve observed of men, the adage seems true.
had you lived, perhaps you would have done
better in fulfilling your duties to mother.
you would have taken care of her affairs better.
you would have married within the race. you
would’ve made her proud without reservations.
you would’ve had her breasts and good hair.
forgive the brevity of this letter, but i am
demanded elsewhere. i’ll write again later,
hoping we’ll have more to share. please think
my questions over carefully before you answer.
and if you can’t be kind, please, be fair.
yours,
Things No One Knows
overcome by the stink of mildewed wash, i have
been three months behind in my rent for thirty years. my
countrymen do not love me. even my lines have
lines. we are getting old in a city where the old are
invisible. i have nothing new to eat and barely five minutes
to use the jane. and less time than that to revisit my
father’s grave. i’ve worn the same underwear for fifteen
of those thirty years and some pieces longer than that
writing friends is a luxury, enemies a necessity. my car
was stripped and stolen months ago and i have no
money with which to repair or replace it. my mentors have
exiled me to the outskirts of nappy literacy. my wallet is
dying of militant brain cancer. my lust for my country
is frigid. the light excludes me and there is
no degree for what is learned in the dark
i am too clumsy to steal big. there is a boogieman in
New York City who conspires against and spreads
rumors about my lost lip. i am so economically crippled
even my begging cup has mold sprouting in its well. my
son has mistaken me for a dragon and his history teachers keep
trying to hose out these flames in my mouth. i do not
attend my high school class reunions because too many of
my classmates died in Vietnam or in the liquor lockers
of America or in those classrooms long ago. there is
a boogiewoman in Oberlin who conspires against me, her
jealousy inspired by my imaginary imaginings
i am trapped in the hold of my greedy grief
and expect to keep circling. i expect my son to escape
and my husband to die during exquisite crisis. the federal
bureau of pajamas is after my hot cross buns. i expect to
awaken from sleep soon. i expect my banana nut bread to
go stale and uneaten. i expect to die poemless and to be
cremated in state ovens. i expect my ashes
to be scattered like pollen, to take wing on the wind
like buddhaflies
Two Times Baby
he’s two nights gone for the second
time. two weeks before that he left
the rehab house and they wouldn’t take
him back. that was two years after he
left the penitentiary and broke two
hearts when he was paroled to my custody
on the condition of marriage. but it
would only take a couple of months before
he started backsliding, picking up the
old habits, old homies, old tracks.
it got to be too much for me and i was
two jumps from killing him when
he split. last time we made love was to
that Doors song of like refrain. now
that he’s gone all i seem to do is
remember how good the two of us got
when we put one-and-one together
Letter to My Older Sister 2
—after Carol Lem
dear Georgiana,
the trees are full now, palms
bless the skyline and winter
never arrives. don’t worry, i
haven’t forgotten my promise
altho it seems impossible to
keep without your support. if
you were here, you’d prove the
proper Big Sis and knock me
on the noggin with a sage fist
at my desk i dredge for the
bodies of survivors. they fill
the absence briefly and then
vanish into angry impotent and
accusatory splatts. why-have-
nots peck at my ears. i turn
up the volume till the walls
shake to rolling stones, black
night’s fallings and dogs at bay
in the morning, i’m greeted by
talking leaves and ghost mushrooms
and the soft mist off the coast,
the scuttlings of ring-tailed
opossums stealing food from feline
odalisques too sated to stir, the
flittings of doves on the mate
and in my reverie i seek you out
to share my favorite lullaby
it is i who sits beside you
it is i who sings from the shallows
it is i scratching against this silence
American Sonnet 26
—for and after Michelle T. Clinton
kicks & jams & slams
too nice too sincere too there. but lovemonger—
without you this city is a pale rude fiction. your
womanly radiance kept the all-knowing crowing. so
no way can i forget you though jealous dark hides you
cloaks you in a sentimental shape-changer’s sufferings. i
will not forget. you. sweetsistuh goodheart
candle-burner/flame-keeper. gimme sommadat toast.
(my blood pressure runs low. deep hypotension)
ooohgo if you must. blow that escape hatch—rubyfruit
flee this sham world. yessum. your leavings a
dreamtrail of sweet snickerings
along this parched desert floor where deviltongues
ache for the magic rush of your angelgush
American Sonnet 34
—after Jones/Baraka
call me a rebel angel
firstborn & full-time resident of lower hell
my eyeballs are shot thru with the heavy crimson
blood of an honest race. my skin is musky dusky—
wings shriveled useless lacquered to my back by
generations of theopathy (o perverse astasia). i be
large-lipped prodigal oracle nappy assignations
the long shadow of my psychosexual dehumanization
blotting out all suns. i rule agony’s pit
Dis messenger! i have heard you blow
treble treble roil and revel
and would rise to dance in the millennium. but
my feet fail me. now. so edematous
i can’t force them into my Tiffany slippers
American Sonnet 39
no ZZZs louise, dere’s a virusconspirus
blue paisley terror don’t want gorgeous moon don’t
care about the orange cat gone stray can’t worry
about failures to drop a bomb big enough to blast us
out of privation or into major note. can’t sweat rent
in arrears, renegade raffia or corner-consuming arachnid
or the sooty blackness clogging airwaves brainwaves
and national arteries. or ghost-eyed latinos begging
work at the backdoor while ebony men beg gang-related
donations for magic bullets at the front. i’m
beset by reams of withering promise belly-up and
spasming on my desktop, immobilized in demonic clockrock,
French-roast flooding the split in my noggin, eyes
Wicked Enchantment Page 9