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Wicked Enchantment

Page 9

by Wanda Coleman


  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

 

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