by Saeed Jones
JASPER, 1998
in memory of James Byrd Jr.
I.
Go back: my throat still
crowded with dirt
and loose teeth
but I speak
(tongue slick with iron)
but I speak
in the language of sharp turns.
II.
Go back: I accept this ride.
Tired, don’t want to walk
home.
It’s not far, but far
enough. I accept
this ride.
Three nice men,
white men,
a bit too nice,
but I accept: no backseat driver.
Smile, ride, quiet.
Could have taken
that last turn,
but I accept these men,
their sense of direction,
but I live
on the other side of town.
Smile, ride, quiet.
Another turn
I wouldn’t take. This road,
back road,
wrong way,
too far.
Smile
with questions
in my eyes.
Ride
backseat, sure is
better than walking.
Quiet
middle of nowhere,
tight-lipped white men,
no other cars around,
no sound but my heart.
Where (say it)
Where (louder)
Where
are we going?
III.
Chain gang, work song, back road,
my body.
Chain gang, work song, back road,
my body.
These men play me dirty
tell my back to sing or break.
Hard-won rattle
of chains
dragged behind this truck,
louder than what little sound
is left in my throat.
Pavement becomes a skin-tight
drum,
they take my teeth
for piano keys.
My God,
this song: one man
chain gang, playing this road.
Every stick,
every pebble: this road
this song.
Hear me, Jasper.
Hear me for miles.
LOWER NINTH
New Orleans, March 2011
For the city and its clogged arteries of light,
a ward of wild grass to answer the absence
of foundation. How the jasmine vine rests
its hands on the abandoned sill for a month,
then pulls itself into the cool dark. And how,
driving through (but not walking), you point
to where you once were sent for milk, detergent,
whatever was needed from the corner store
and the jagged slab of concrete the water left
behind. You wonder which states the neighbors
moved to, and if they are thinking of what you
see: how the crabgrass eventually won, streets
empty aside from the refrigerator that floated
into the avenue unquestioned and stayed,
and how low it all is and why.
DRAG
The dress is an oil slick. The dress
ruins everything. In a hotel room
by the water, I put it on when
he says, I want to watch you take it off.
Zipping me up, he kisses the mile
markers of my spine. I can’t afford
this view. From here, I see a city
that doesn’t know it’s already
drowning. My neck shivers from
the trail of his tongue. I keep my
eyes on the window, just past
his bald spot. He’s short. I can see
the rain that has owned us for weeks
already. The dress will survive us.
The dress will be here when men
come in boats to survey the damage.
He makes me another drink, puts
on some jazz, and the dress begins
to move without me. Slow like something
that knows it cannot be stopped,
the dress seeps. The dress slides
with my body floating inside,
an animal caught in the sludge.
If he wraps his arms around me,
it will be the rest of his life.
I don’t even know what I am
in this dress; I just sway with
my arms open and wait.
KUDZU
I won’t be forgiven
for what I’ve made
of myself.
Soil recoils
from my hooked kisses.
Pines turn their backs
on me. They know
what I can do
with the wrap of my legs.
Each summer,
when the air becomes crowded
with want, I set all my tongues
upon you.
To quiet this body,
you must answer
my tendriled craving.
All I’ve ever wanted
was to kiss crevices, pry them open,
and flourish within dew-slick
hollows.
How you mistake
my affection.
If I ever strangled sparrows,
it was only because I dreamed
of better songs.
BEHEADED KINGDOM
I.
With his one good knife, a door is cut to where the spine waits: patient,
then flaring. All my lights turned on. A scream is loosed,
grey silk sound pulled out by hooks, black before the filaments.
Quiet, he begs, rakish doctor. Then a hand goes in.
II.
He takes his time to walk the bright house of me.
Each room rococo, floored with mahogany. A wealth of blood cells flickering
red, then blue, red, then blue in shadow boxes. Here, a room of rare orchids
the color of a drinker’s liver.
III.
Do you understand the song you’ve sent walking through my catacombs
of marrow? Black parasol notes hum, dirge of the removed
lung. I now know the promise of a body scooped hollow, tea lights
in the torso’s cave. You’ve come inside from another country
and I have so much to give.
THRALLDOM
I survived on mouthfuls of hyacinth.
My hunger did not apologize.
Stamens licked clean, pollinated
throat; Beauty was what I choked on.
When the men with cruel tongues
worked me, each grunt gnashed
between my teeth. One fogged
night to the next, my palm
pressed against each thrust.
How else to say more
please under the sweat
and heave of their bodies?
CRUEL BODY
You answer his fistand the blow
shatters you to sparks.
Unconsciousis a better place, but swim back
to yourself.
Behind a door you can’t open,he drinks
to keep loving you,
then wades out into the blue hour.
Still on the floor, waitingfor your name
to claim your mouth.
Get up. Find your legs,
leave.
THALLIUM
If I held out the candle, paraffin burning for him,
then swallowed all the light, if
in the dark, I was a cobra’s tongue,
how could it have been his fault?
Robber baron, unzipped vagabond, he mistook me
for the comfort of a small creek, water crawling along the backs
of rocks, emerald house beside it,
me
at the door in nothing
but welcome.
Over wine, I warned him
soft
you can’t sleep here; you won’t
wake up.
In the snuffed room, my touch serrated
bit of tooth
or switchblade.
Even a peacock feather comes to a point.
He thought
I was kissing him.
HE THINKS HE CAN LEAVE ME
by leaving me,
but even now
I walk
burning
through the empty streets
of his mind.
Lonely
little town, no sound
but my footsteps.
I grin,
mouthful of hell
my teeth
soot black.
In curlicues of smoke, I sing
his name
to the night
and his darkness
mistakes me
for sunrise.
3
SECONDHAND (SMOKE)
I borrowed his body just like
this.I wanted, so I had his wrist
like this: held the bones easiest to breaklike so, arched in question
and the cigarette,a sixth finger lit, tilted,ash outlining the exhaled yes—
Even if the yes was palimpsest,
each breath confusing the other for a blow of smoke,
it matters that I had him hereonce.
Even held down, even pinned, ersatz: the idea of his body,
a yes of my own.
I stole his tongue; now he can’t say no.
His yes is mine to keep,mine to answer
my own questions with, like:
Now that I’ve mined you, are you mine?
I spell his body with smoke, breathe him
into the seat beside me. Black lung to blacker lung
and ever waiting: his answer isjustlike—
BODY & KENTUCKY BOURBON
In the dark, my mind’s night, I go back
to your work-calloused hands, your body
and the memory of fields I no longer see.
Cheek wad of chew tobacco,
Skoal-tin ring in the back pocket
of threadbare jeans, knees
worn through entirely. How to name you:
farmhand, Kentucky boy, lover.
The one who taught me to bear
the back-throat burn of bourbon.
Straight, no chaser, a joke in our bed,
but I stopped laughing; all those empty bottles,
kitchen counters covered with beer cans
and broken glasses. To realize you drank
so you could face me the morning after,
the only way to choke down rage at the body
sleeping beside you. What did I know
of your father’s backhand or the pine casket
he threatened to put you in? Only now,
miles and years away, do I wince at the jokes:
white trash, farmer’s tan, good ole boy.
And now, alone, I see your face
at the bottom of my shot glass
before my own comes through.
ECLIPSE OF MY THIRD LIFE
Hunger is who we are
under a black lacquered moon.
Undone in his flashlit arms, is this my body anymore?
Red Chinese kite in the night of my throat,
no one can see.
Unpaved road that veers
into fragments of bone, a drive only he knows.
Spine stitched to shadow’s edge, I lose my head
to grass when his want walks
the length of me, king of my beheaded kingdom.
Stars are just jewelry stolen from graves, he sighs,
pressing me into loam, amaryllis shoots
already owning my dark. I’ll wake, a garden
gated in April light,
my veins in every leaf.
GUILT
Five years gone but my body
is back in the truck beside you,
speeding toward the dogs
we cannot see but are about to hit.
It is not dark. Midday, windows
down. Wind runs all its hands
through the hair of every tree
we pass & maybe this is where
I close my eyes & say, “It sounds
like the ocean.” Maybe you are
on the edge of an answer when
three dogs that were not in the road
suddenly are. Before I can see
their eyes, before I am even sure
they are there, the yelp of injury
& smack against metal are the same
sound. You pull over. I open my
door before you can say you
are too afraid to get out. The walk
to the front of your truck is hours,
but I am there now & the dog
is not. No dent. No blood.
The road that was an empty road
is an empty road. The wind
& trees have turned into waves again.
You don’t believe me. “We hit
that dog,” you hiss, now out
of the truck. We both stare
at the dent, the blood; the dogs
are not there. A rustle
in the trees at the edge of the road,
but no eyes looking out at us.
SLEEPING ARRANGEMENT
I’ve decided: you will stay
under our bed, on the floor
not even in the space between
mattress and metal frame.
Take your hand out
from under my pillow.
And take your sheets with you.
Drag them under. Make pretend ghosts.
I can’t have you rattling the bedsprings
so keep still, keep quiet.
Mistake yourself for shadows.
Learn the lullabies of lint.
*
I will do right by you:
crumbs brushed off my sheets,
white chocolate chips
or the corners of crackers.
Count on the occasional dropped grape,
a peach pit with dried yellow hairs.
I’ve heard some men can survive
on dust mites alone for weeks at a time.
There’s a magnifying glass on the nightstand,
in case it comes to that.
APOLOGIA
If I started with the words He made me—
not like He created me,
not like With my clothes off, you can still see his thumbprints
in the clay that became my skin.
No. If I started with He made me
lick the taste of bullet
from the barrel of his revolver
would you use your body to guard my body tonight?
The roof has been ripped off and the stars refuse
to peel their stares from my bruises.
I didn’t mean He
as in God; I meant the man I traded you for.
KETAMINE & COMPANY
Strobe-lit and slick with music,
I set my hair on fireso you can find me on the dance floor.
What’s the word in Spanish?
Singed, then smokedout: I’m your black matador, blood only
makes me readier.I’ve traded my lungs for fog machines.
You won’t breathe tonight
without getting high on me.
I’m burning.I’m not
burning.I’m
dancing.I’m hell.Guernica on all fours. Horse-mouthed and—
How do you say easy?
The pill on my tongue catches light like a doomed moon
and we throw our half-drunk drinks to the floor.
Crunch to the crack to the crack to the—
glass shards in my soles;my diamond moves.
Using my right nostril
now,us
e me,you can
use me if you want,I’m easy,I’m so, so easy.
Say it in Spanish. Yeah. Say easy.
I’m good.
I work the dance floor untilI am the dance floor. Get on me,
baby. You promised you wouldn’t let me do this
alone.
Why aren’t you on me yet?
THRALLDOM II
Bluegrass, horsewhip, blue moon, bruise.
All fours, steel bit, steel gag, work. Good hurt, hurts good, his lap, smack.
Fishnets, lips pursed, knife wound—red. First pose, third pose, head thrown
back. This way, that way, shit boy, slap.
Want more, black moor, unmoored, loosed. Limp wrist, broke wrist, rag doll, thrown. Backseat, head down, headlights, off. His car, his house, locked room, owned. Break loose, new town, fake name, loaned.
Run hard, look back, go back, owned.
Same bit, same gag, third pose, smack.
Horsewhip, hurts bad, head thrown, slap.
Head down, shit boy, look back, bruise. Want more,
fight back, no more, unleashed, this way
out.
SKIN LIKE BRICK DUST
In bed, your back curved
to answer the heat of my holding
& Harlem was barely awake below us
when a half-broken building
gave in. First, a few loose bricks,
then decades crashed to the street
just as a bus pulled up. Passengers
choking on dust rushed
to escape the wreck
of someone else’s memory.
Two blocks beyond gravity,