Somewhere there’s a baby on the line. I want to be careful with what comes next. Your face still a strange place I visit when I need an alley to watch my back in. A baby on the line. Not a kitchen restaurant line getting dressed fermented rhubarb sitting quietly. The kind of line two people create when only one wants to stay. In the park where I loved you publicly now stands a little man pounding two drums led by an elder. For dinner, I’ll kiss the baby’s body before freezing. Dead as in not here yet. Dead as in not my baby. This is not a lesson in frozen dinners. It’s asking myself to stop investigating your personal life. Drums were certainly made for you. They make all that noise. They don’t ask questions.
THIS WON’T MAKE SENSE IN ENGLISH
pasada [pasu] n. step; ~ di ómi, grasa-l mudjer, short visit; badja ~, dance the pasada dance
Your freckles wholesome your steps leading me I am sucking my stomach in as much as I can this dance leading me into nights full of you full in you full off you fueled up can you pull my dress down for me can you feel this dance leading us to the end of the night I already need a ride home already nostalgic about the crooked space between your teeth countless points of contact we’re holding each other like this short visit is the definition of consumption
STROLOGY LEO
Fireworks start in June. You will take them for gunshots if you haven’t heard a pistol go off uncomfortably close to your head. If you haven’t heard a group of boys ride by your house and there! Three bullets. First last and security. Leo, shower before your roommates. Hot water rare as someone when you need them most. A grateful heart shall not despair. On the 14th day of this month, the door will weep behind you. You are more than the walls men rap about. Greater than the walls that managed not to collapse in high school, walls that got higher in college. Walls, easy enough, keep men in a job line. Welfare line. Funeral line. Touching the weep, the ceiling will play the trombone. The floor beneath you will dance.
BIG SUN COMING STRONG THROUGH THE MOTEL BLINDS
Before you closed the blinds
on our first morning together
you left me naked under a Haitian
quilt. This was not the time I waited
for you in a black tulle dress
and nothing else. Tulle against
my ass against my thighs
against everything I thought I was.
This is what a wife would do,
you note. By this time,
you had already touched me well.
You’re a different kind of professional.
There are technical terms for what
I’m doing except I left my big words
at home. Except I wanted light
to come through the blinds.
What makes this complicated
to detail is how special my body
felt to be chosen by you.
What a fading place of grace
for false exploration. Is it truly
an honor to please a man who
doesn’t know that being stalked
means the number of hotel cookies
I ate while waiting for him is on record.
What an honor to please a man
who doesn’t know,
that wanting to mourn secretly,
is the same as doing it.
GPS
says there’s a Duane Reade a mile from Chinatown. It’s 96 degrees on a Saturday. My legs are wet. Sweat stings my contact lenses. I’m coming for you. The taxi driver is West African. You are my sister, he says. I’m changing my bra, my shirt, in the backseat, while he keeps his eyes on the Lincoln Tunnel and his thoughts on women who are slaves to their men. I stare at his name and badge number and wonder what his wife in Africa looks like. I wanted to ask what his American woman looks like. A lot of time passes and I think about my old West African lover and feel bad for being so American. Be more like your father’s side; he’s so involved we get lost. I get to you. My hair the size of my hips. I awkwardly tell you I like your t-shirt. You say It’s just a grey t-shirt. You kiss the back of my legs and I want to cry. Only the sun has come this close, only the sun.
THIS WON’T MAKE SENSE IN ENGLISH
banhâ v. take a bath; surround
banhera n. bathtub; tub
banhóka n. sweet bath
banhu n. bath; swim; tuma ~, take a bath, take a shower
banu n. wave; oscillation
What a waste of energy riding an elevator alone one more person’ll make it worth it sinking comes in two the howling then the tombstones buried in snow the only little marker from home if you’ve got bad energy take a dip at the beach sea salt’ll bring you right back to the time you were so happy you inboxed your tub sudded body for a Hollywood star
STROLOGY TAURUS
Be a bird this month. Be built in speakers. When you find your honey eclipsed behind licorice lips, wisdom body yourself into a feverish chant. Remember when you used to be so mad at Biggie for killing Tupac. Turn that storyless scar into a symphony. He’s so new; you love when he calls you names. When you don’t know how he could live outside of you. When rich black ain’t less black. Be the exotic accent, over the e, fuck like one of those neon signs that flinch. Shoulders make ceilings tangible. Be alluring when you break. You are a furnished room. You mourn persons unknown. You belt out dear mamas wrapped in rap. You are more than body goals. Your wisdom body is mounted at the tips of praying hands. Your wisdom body will trump the trauma. Be a bird this month. Be turned on by your own energy. The only cure for this hangover is you.
THERE’S SOMETHING SO DEEPLY GRATIFYING ABOUT WELCOMING YOUR MOTHER INTO YOUR HOME AND OFFERING HER A MEAL AS NOURISHMENT AND THANKS
When small introduces itself as a dirty word
I contemplate how to put food down.
Each early morning at 4:17 a.m.
an operating system restores
its warless ocean of information.
Within hours following deletion
I wake with less interest
than having slept with. I forget
the flavor of your peroxide mouth after
hours of Facetime. Your beard
requires a search engine
of its own. I search for me too.
Using altered keystrokes like am I
really the baby my mother carried drunk?
Am I the operating system? Am I hungry?
While at dinner being fucked
crawled into my mind. Hula-hooping
wine glasses. My mom needs to know
that it’s okay to take your socks off
at the beach. The idea of feeling a delight
not associated with fried shellfish is
a thing to feel. But now
I’m thinking about our weight.
There are no women with our bodies on TV.
AND I KNOW THAT SHE FEELS BEAUTIFUL—DO WE HAVE CANCER
We talked at length about her cervix and her decision to no longer perm her hair. A woman at the Cape Verdean salon in Roxbury told her, You are more beautiful with long black hair. I told her they’re bitches, even though they’re my people. I stared at her curly Sierra Leone sunset. She said when she takes a bath she can feel where they’ve cut. We have a lot in common, although I have not felt my own. Fingers move my unsettled hair around to hide the bald spots. She said we look alike when we met for lunch today. The pain is back and I feel underdressed. A wave of bare elbows digging trenches in the tabletops.
STROLOGY AQUARIUS
Wake up, let the Internet comfort you in its lazy web. Ask Mother Google about wildfires. She will moan, The fire will pass before your house burns down. No one’s thinking about you. The ringing in your ear is sirens. Begin your departure by brushing yourself against the shower wall until you; you start to fall from the clinging. Repeat. Like rituals to make you beautiful (lemon water in the morning). Rituals to make you pleasant (therapy). Say you stay, know that you still have time to build yourself of what the rich want. Chase the rule of th
e road, the rules of your house. Be the boat in the water, the bridge lifting its arms making way for the things you carry. You can even be a car this month, Aquarius. Speed across frantic flames; let the Internet break itself in your rich wet presence.
31-YEAR-OLD LOVER
Draped in a Malibu mansion
dressed in my aunt’s blonde wig
and her long, black suede coat,
I wanted to be Lil’ Kim.
If I had to name myself, my name
would be on every corner, meaning the promise
of plenty, like the abundance of stores
selling blonde Barbies and boy toy
soldiers who could use a break.
The moment news from afar approaches the rim
of my callous glass of Cab, my name
would already be your fragile song
crushed under the weight of encounter,
as you found me crushed under the weight of a car.
Drunk on provocative statements, I was still alive
when I reached for you, how you turned away,
how you glazed past me, demanding I let go.
Only some know when it’s time to chill.
If I had to name myself, it would be hardcore.
Kim’s legs wide open. Hardcore
like how you won’t learn to drive
a car that’d play Gil Scott-Heron
for you. Hardcore
like how I’ve hardly been
sleeping without you.
SIMONE
with her big knees ballerina skirt. Imagined her in this church the ink on the back of her hands fading falling down her raised arms her mouth slightly whispering to her most high. How we’d look in a photograph. How I’d look to myself to our friends loved ones smiling how we’d look together. Wide knees and thighs glasses dolling tints of blue her hair taking comfort around one shoulder. The end of class brings Simone close to me. A man I don’t know lifts her attention I walk away hungry then stop rustle in my bag watch them talk. Each day feels like a phone call a sound with good news a promise to return with more information. Imagined making love to her not knowing where to begin.
YOUR EYES BLINK FIVE-MINUTE MILES
Knot by knot I pulled my hair
out on the ferry. Who knows what
these arms are doing above my head.
I would lick my own face
to taste the sea. I would take
your bulbs for their brightness. People
who enjoy life make me uncomfortable.
How could you love the quarry so but sleep
gripping your own button down shirt
for freedom? My hair was playing
the thorn to your eyes as our ears
our ears mistook wind in the trees for the ocean.
STROLOGY PISCES
It’s profoundly normal to become fragile while ordering coffee. The barista wants your money. The barista wants your name. Say his, while pretending to look for change. Against your tongue is the only direction he goes. Say his name, and then say yours. This week, imagine trying to have a body and a break. Open legs come easy, but that’s not grief. Grief is the patch of hair you find on your thighs as you walk out of the coffee shop and head toward the disco in high waisted shorts. The key to monogamy is dancing. Allow his name to teach you what you taught him. On the blackest night, tame the madness by losing your face inside another woman. What you long for and desire inside of your home has everything and nothing to do with what goes on outside. When you get back to the party, make sure you know what you’re partying for.
YOU WILL, INDEED, ALWAYS BE THE SAME PERSON AFTER VACATION
Mexican tacos in Paris
look like thick rolled cigars,
if cigars had meat inside.
They dance Bachata.
Their feet move in confusion.
The sirens here remind me
of a wretchedness
I cannot place,
maybe something I heard
in a book. European unrest
over deboned white fish.
In Le Marais, I told a Canadian
from Morocco, here lies a chef.
I felt his fingers tremble
as he felt my palms for shucking oysters.
Nothing in its right place
but there we were
walking in the time of Daguerre
on water with our hands
on the mouths of our purses.
Go to Paris. Let it change you.
When you arrive back
warily on a buddy pass,
you say you are not easily impressed.
In the Seine of truth, you are easily
lonely
at the Eiffel,
in the Louvre, you smile
with a nose your father called big.
Into the camera you go,
your thrown self
in front of Mona Lisa.
AFTER FINDING A HAIR IN MY FOOD AT ROXBURY’S FIRST GENTRIFIED CAFÉ
I didn’t want my money back.
Of course I want my money
back. I tell my kids, Ask for
what you want. Speak up.
Use your words. Want. There’s
a strand of hair in my food
and my hair ain’t that straight.
That’s what I said. I said
let’s try again. I want fingers
in my mouth. I love the worst
city beach. My body been
made like steel, black like
the gun I found in my cousin’s
Timberland bag. I was terrified
to touch. If I knew what I
know, that I’d be showing up
to the party smelling like
yellow rice and bacalhau,
like yesterday’s coffee, I
would have touched it, his gun.
Having your life together is
the shell casing in this poem.
Don’t think: Your body will
ever be yours. Though last
night I touched myself, green
garlic on my tongue, spiced
Goya in my veins.
STROLOGY CAPRICORN
When the rain stops, go to the top of the royal fortress not far from the two towering churches to see the scenery and smell the damp of the earth your knees will dig into later tonight. Go to her house. Experience her at breakfast. Your blouse and hair will get caught in the rain that turns the yard, all of the city green. Chat with her father about corn crops. Tell him you are the woman he’s expecting to show up with fertilizer for all the farmers growing produce typically not found in the old city. When you arrive, ask her to take you over the base of it. Go to steal the fennel head, to see her barefoot, to gather enough of her to do business with.
BLOSSOM
The deal with being struck by lightning is there are no deals
for the lonely hearted.
No deal when I said I love you too to my lover of three weeks.
I miss my cat, even he doesn’t belong to me.
On the Vineyard women appear in the living rooms of white
fenced homes.
They all look the same. They all shout come inside me
to the only room on the bottom floor.
My lover would be jealous if he knew the way I touched
women.
All shoulders taste of potential. All lashes close doors for me.
I know losing involves lying
on the ground trying to lift myself up. Had I accepted the
bottom floor
lightning could not have flowed through this silent carpel as a
blossom.
Flowers travel only when I carry them. I am the most attractive
flower
when I’m standing alone next to everything.
NOT CRAZY JUST AFRAID TO ASK
if she had a baby born with an addiction.
Need I’ve learned, is one of those months
when I am not lonely it’s just that April
is the cruelest month.
I’m not lonely
it’s the wind blowing back grateful
blowing forth complacent. Fortune says
I’m not crazy
just one of those people who can walk
in the house walk right by the dog.
Learned a long time ago that swearing
on God when lying
won’t kill my mother won’t kill
the neighborhood boys. Nothing
special about this year is the truth.
But the sun
is out today cars are being cared for
in a novelty phase sort of way.
The dogs ’round here walk their men
up and down the dead grass still
blooming in the year
I must be wrong about.
STROLOGY LIBRA
The second week of the first month with her name strepped on your throat, meet her at your favorite store. Just don’t meet her halfway. You will need a map but no directions. Libra, you will never meet her. This week, get to know her acumen. Shout the answers without her asking. She will never ask. Be innocent until the day comes. Let spiders live, let your fears jaywalk across your chest. This week, today, your ears will get hot at the cut of her teeth when you tell her you already have someone. Pretend where you’ll first meet is not a waste of a great city. The city you will ask to pick her up in. She will ask you, Where? & you will type, In the air. The second week of the first month with her name strepped on your throat, study every comment on every photo. Pretend she is not a waste of a great city. Though she makes you feel like a God, do not forget she is not the one to leave home for. She is a practice. Smile while her tongue hangs above you like a wind chime. Blow. Blow. Bow. Libra, she is a ritual. You’re trembling. Fall asleep like you mean it. Like it’s late night after the raspberry pie your girlfriend will make in your mom’s house. Fall asleep like you mean it—go to sleep with her profile open.
Cape Verdean Blues Page 3