Lighthead
Page 7
I’d like to call him, Father, the one wearing a vest of woven snakes,
but he will not answer, not in the storm which darkens our route,
not with the roach he keeps trapped in his mouth. Ma and me ride
a blue mule until its dumb heart gives out. She grips its tail and I
its ears and we drag it to the side of the road like a bag of garbage
on trash day, its muscles soft as cushion and its bones soft too,
like coil gone lazy in a couch, and we leave him burning with all
the humanity fire strips away. A blue stench rides Ma and me
deep into a dream of the South where the roaches weep
like the mules of slaves, where they are quiet as cows waiting
for slaughter, and if their backs shine like jewels in the field,
the roaches on parade, it’s because they are bright in the rain
and filled with a wonder which cuts through them and the fields
they wander and the hands that pluck them from tobacco leaves
with the certainty of a blade. I want to live as the roach lives, without
a head or body, free on both sides of the grave, like my father
beneath a black umbrella spitting on the Lord before he walks away.
AIRHEAD
I. TRANSLATION OF A SCENE FROM A NONEXISTENT MOVIE
“You are just stupid,
cruel, and jealous,”
the emperor tells the prophet
just after the prophet says,
“Let me tell you what will be
the trouble with you,”
but just before
the emperor removes
the prophet’s head,
which is to say, just before
he orders it removed.
II. SCENE DELETED UNDER THE EMPEROR’S ORDER
“There is no death beyond
the theory of death,”
the prophet tells the emperor
just after the emperor asks
for his head and just before
the head of the prophet
taking leave of body
can be heard saying,
“I have no form because
I have no allegiance
to form.”
Notes
Several poems in this book are based on the structure of the pecha kucha, a Japanese business presentation format wherein a presenter narrates or riffs on twenty images connected to a single theme for twenty seconds at a time. The words pecha kucha are a Japanese adaptation/loanword of the word picture, pronounced in three syllables, like “pe-chak-cha.” “Arbor for Butch,” which is most faithful to the form, uses the wood sculptures of the artist Martin Puryear. Googling the section titles will provide images of the sculptures. Other poems inspired by the form use music (“Coffin for Head of State” uses twenty Fela Kuti songs), elements of fiction (“For Brothers of the Dragon”), and conversational fragments (“Twenty Measures of Chitchat”). For more info, go to www.pecha-kucha.org.
“Lighthead’s Guide to the Galaxy” alludes to a line from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: “Ask a glass of water.”
“The Golden Shovel” is, as the end words suggest, after Gwendolyn Brooks’s “We Real Cool.”
“The Last Train to Africa” is after Elizabeth Alexander’s poem “Ladders.” Like the form used in “The Golden Shovel,” the end words come from her poem.
Elizabeth “Libba” Cotten, the musician mentioned in “New Folk,” was a self-taught blues and folk singer and guitarist.
“Mystic Bounce” shares its title with a song on Madlib’s album Blue Note Remixed.
The title “God Is an American” comes from a line in David Bowie’s song “I’m Afraid of Americans,” from his album Earthling.
“Snow for Wallace Stevens” references Wallace Stevens’s poems “A High-Toned Old Christian Woman” and “Like Decorations in a Nigger Cemetery.”
“Music to Interrogate By” shares its title with Jan Jelinek’s “Music to Interrogate By,” from his album La Nouvelle Pauvreté.
“I Am a Bird Now” shares its title with Antony & the Johnsons’ album, I Am a Bird Now.
About the Author
Terrance Hayes’s most recent poetry collection, Wind in a Box (Penguin, 2006), was named one of the best one hundred books of 2006 by Publishers Weekly. His other books of poetry are Hip Logic (Penguin, 2002), which won the National Poetry Series Open Competition and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and Muscular Music (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2005; Tia Chucha Press, 1999), which won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. His honors include a Pushcart Prize, three Best American Poetry selections, a Whiting Writers Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is a professor of creative writing at Carnegie Mellon University and lives with his family in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
PENGUIN POETS
JOHN ASHBERY
Selected Poems
Self-Portrait in a Convex
Mirror
TED BERRIGAN
The Sonnets
JOE BONOMO
Installations
PHILIP BOOTH
Selves
JIM CARROLL
Fear of Dreaming:
The Selected Poems
Living at the Movies
Void of Course
ALISON HAWTHORNE
DEMING
Genius Loci
Rope
CARL DENNIS
New and Selected Poems
1974-2004
Practical Gods
Ranking the Wishes
Unknown Friends
DIANE DI PRIMA
Loba
STUART DISCHELL
Backwards Days
Dig Safe
STEPHEN DOBYNS
Velocities: New and
Selected Poems, 1966-
1992
EDWARD DORN
Way More West: New and
Selected Poems
AMY GERSTLER
Crown of Weeds: Poems
Dearest Creature
Ghost Girl
Medicine
Nerve Storm
EUGENE GLORIA
Drivers at the Short-Time
Motel
Hoodlum Birds
DEBORA GREGER
Desert Fathers, Uranium
Daughters
God
Men, Women, and Ghosts
Western Art
TERRANCE HAYES
Hip Logic
Lighthead
Wind in a Box
ROBERT HUNTER
Sentinel and Other Poems
MARY KARR
Viper Rum
WILLIAM KECKLER
Sanskrit of the Body
JACK KEROUAC
Book of Sketches
Book of Blues
Book of Haikus
JOANNA KLINK
Circadian
JOANNE KYGER
As Ever: Selected Poems
ANN LAUTERBACH
Hum
If In Time: Selected Poems,
1975-2000
On a Stair
Or to Begin Again
CORINNE LEE
PYX
PHILLIS LEVIN
May Day
Mercury
WILLIAM LOGAN
Macbeth in Venice
Strange Flesh
The Whispering Gallery
ADRIAN MATEJKA
Mixology
MICHAEL MCCLURE
Huge Dreams: San
Francisco and Beat
Poems
DAVID MELTZER
David’s Copy: The Selected
Poems of David Meltzer
CAROL MUSKE
An Octave above Thunder
Red Trousseau
ALICE NOTLEY
The Descent of Alette
Disobedience
In the Pines
Mysteries of
Small Houses
LAWRENCE RAAB
The History of Forgetting
Visible Signs: New and
Selected Poems
BARBARA RAS
The Last Skin
One Hidden Stuff
PATTIANN ROGERS
Generations
Wayfare
WILLIAM STOBB
Nervous Systems
TRYFON TOLIDES
An Almost Pure Empty
Walking
ANNE WALDMAN
Kill or Cure
Manatee/Humanity
Structure of the World
Compared to a Bubble
JAMES WELCH
Riding the Earthboy 40
PHILIP WHALEN
Overtime: Selected Poems
ROBERT WRIGLEY
Earthly Meditations: New
and Selected Poems
Lives of the Animals
Reign of Snakes
MARK YAKICH
The Importance of Peeling
Potatoes in Ukraine
Unrelated Individuals
Forming a Group
Waiting to Cross
JOHN YAU
Borrowed Love Poems
Paradiso Diaspora