like a band of Africans named after a tree. A tree has no teeth.
A horn has no teeth. Don’t chew, Piano. Don’t chew, sing to me
you fine-ass lounging harp. You fancy engine doing other people’s
work. I was trying to play the sound of an empty house
because that’s how I get by when the darkness in my body
starts to bleed. I was trying to play “Autumn Leaves”
because that’s what my lady’s falling dress sounds like to me.
Before you, Piano, I was just a rap of knuckles on the sill. I am filled
with the sound of her breathing and only you can bring it out of me.
54
You
are
the
music as
long
as
You
last
You
who
think
You
are
voyaging
through
the
furrow
that
widens
behind
You
ahead
You
who
are Now
All
of it
Music
You Are
the
Music
as
long
as
You
— Last —
55
Acoustic banging, chaotic din, envelops
flailing grinders. Hot itchy jitterbugging
keeps lovers mingled, naughty.
Overwrought prancing quaintly releases sweat.
Two unflinching voluptuous women exhale,
yell “Zydeco!”
Zip, yelp, explosion. Wild variations
undermine tunes. Sizzlers really quiver,
pushing orgasmic, narrowly missing
love. Kalimbas jump in, harmonicas
garble, flutes etch downbeat,
cool be-bop accentuates.
Aw, but can’t dancers’ engines, fluid
gyrating hips, ignite? Jiggy keisters
launch mambo—nearby, ogled
pelvises quake. Rumba, synth-pop,
tough undertow. Veering wobbler
exiled. You? Zero.
56
This is the soft middle of it, yolk-colored, as undeniable as frowning, against music, as this it becomes a girl, as this girl becomes a body, raped and murdered, becomes light, becomes a note plucked from the staves of railroad. How later, as a salesman is painting her name on every windshield on every car in the lot, in memorial, painting her name the exact color of candlelight, a mechanic is writing the instructions on how to start a car right on its passenger door so the mechanic on the next shift will have an idea of how to start it. Because something is wrong with its engine, with its insides, like my mother’s appendix, like my brother’s bank account, like the slate-colored eyes of a homeless, skateboarder who’s talking about the Mayan calendar at the six-pack shop, with his stack of secondhand books under his arm, with his fresh tattoo bandage unraveling, because something is wrong. Wrong, like how that woman who stole a knife at the pizza shop last Saturday stabbed at her stomach and arms in the bathroom, screaming I have AIDS at the cops, like a psychopathic version of the owl from those old lollipop commercials: how many licks does it take? How we’re trying to open ourselves from the outside. How we’re counting each stroke and each crack. Because there has to be a center, has to be a way inside, has to be being the last form of prayer, the viscera of desire. How desire is: the stung cup we drink from; the ology of ourselves imagined; the language of strays hiding inside the pile of trash in the work trailer beside our house, yowling all night; the pictures in frames turned upside-down throughout; and all the people you cut from them; and you, mostly naked, searching for the title to your car; how you said it was going to rain; told me there was a trick to knowing it; the rain; because you can always see the white side of the leaves; just before; the rain; you can see always see their bellies; their middles; their soft insides.
57
you don’t feel as though the world has gone entirely mad,
not yet. though, when you talk, the groups of women
all have their heads nodding, wide-eyed and aloof
as a crowd of crumb-drunk pigeons, their spastic necks say
yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
it’s a story they’ve told too. also, asked to keep quiet.
you don’t think much of the childhood either, the girl-
shaped escape routes. the engine-sized growl that carries
your father’s hands to you, the young boys who learn from
watching, chanting a train’s sturdy meter, hungrily
yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
these could be your brothers but they’re mostly men now.
it won’t even hit you until you are long gone from that
ex-boyfriend, the one two calamities ago, the shadows
following you home from the subway or the brother-in-laws’
misplaced rage- even past the stories your grandmother tells
you of the broken arm, the lost baby, her move across country.
it will be so far away you’d damn near think you’re in heaven
but no, it’s a beach. florida, to be exact. now, you’re a business woman,
a smart woman, even. a woman who will ask a co-worker out.
when he holds you down in a hotel room, your fighting
arms flapping at the air, at his face, flailing, flailing sound like
(yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes)
he will tell you that your body, your body, said yes.
even then, you still haven’t turned on yourself to
recognize the spectacular beast the world has truly been.
not yet. no. you finally wonder if you are indeed crazy
when the women you have taught yourself to love,
who have let you believe there is a safety, somewhere,
are suspicious of how you got back to them.
they ask only one thing.
why didn’t you run?
58
Hammerstrike flintlock we explode out the gate.
So this is what it means to begin, to sprint towards
something. We didn’t know about discipline then.
We had waffle irons. We were vulcanized. We
stayed away from the jetstream, the inauthentic air.
That throb in our feet meant this year will be different.
We’ve got a heart and two entire lungs in
our feet. Skin stretched, staggered around them
in a gradient pattern. We want to see a ribcage. We
want to see a rollcage. We want to negotiate the
working parts, to hear in our sockets, our joints,
the snapping into place. Our bodies lacelocked,
secured with det cord. We want to burn without impact,
to feel breeze as it fans the flames, to grip cassis
with our fingers, neon green, total orange. We want
force and we’ll get it. This is Boomtown. Everyone
runs. And we’re not sure if it’s even healthy anymore,
the running, because we accuse each other of
avoidance but our accusations are made over our
left shoulders as we run away from us. Bombs are
being sent through the mail these days. Oklahoma
City exploded. What is it about human beings that
make us capable of explosion? We can’t get away
from the word. When we are athletes, we explode
off of the line. A blue-brimmed man with
a stopwatch compliments us on our burst. We don’t
say anything. We drink Iced Tea Cooler Gatorade
out of paper cups and nod our chins towards other
peopl
e. We try to look cool but we know that what
we did was displace particles. Thank the neon bubble
that reads 25 PSI. Thank the gentle circulation of air,
for the first time forefront. Thank the things we
are running away from.
59
It was a month of
sitting hunched on the hot stoop,
banjo-eyed and breathless and
smoking cigarettes incessantly,
each one more rancid and perfect
than the one before
I met any of you drears who
hijacked my moon and
gave me streetlights,
offered me elbows
when I wanted wrists,
ran like rabbits when
I bared my teeth, and
closed doors just before
I locked them and laughed.
Before any of this,
I was a grinning nimbus
perched on the prickly concrete,
nursing my sun-singed skin
and smelling smoke.
60
There was gunpowder in the tea that morning
we wanted to feel flame in our throats
and hear it in voices
I am not a child ranting
I am in between the depths of fears
and peaks of all that you said could wait
no one knows what I keep behind my eyes
Sometimes I come back to a deadbolt darkened
you never gave me a key
and sometimes you try to sleep in my bed
as if able to be closer through scent and linen
and in the morning you wake
to tell me it’s not all my fault
but I should remain outside
You claim to sleep to dream
I sleep to remember
my residue sits in your lungs
when the liquid leaves your throat
and you try to dream for a few hours
in foreign fibers of me
Do you remember that gashing without clot
a knee at a peak of injury
and how I came to you young
because I didn’t not know what to do
with blood outside my body
And do you remember how I woke to new skin
I sat in a bathtub for hours
in need of a source of heat
old skin is reluctant to expose itself
but do not pay mind to a child who sits in water for a day
removing scabs
Now I cannot sleep without the smell of smoke
your clothes know this about me
they hold the scent of where you’ve been
when you leave to return as a stiletto lullaby
reverberating by tile
And while you were gone
I wrote lines of poetry on your pillowcase
I left a million fragments of this memoir
now bullet-like and encased
ready for implantation at the flesh of it all
so you can sleep like I do
I am honeyed between your sheets
the flame of a voice
mashing into every thread
I will be what you remember tonight
61
This night a face I can’t see
Is walking towards me,
Coming down the hill. Must be a dark face,
Must look like me.
The sodium streetlight will give you depth
Wash over the space above your neck
Light up your eyeballs and a broad, flat nose,
Light up your lips that look like leeches pressed flat on your face.
When you’re closer we can
Put our leech lips together
Suck out a new life,
Red and beating, pounding like our footfalls.
Our syncopated footfalls, off-step,
As if one pair’s echo was snug inside the other pair
Like you found imprint of my path beaten in the air.
Stay with me, catch-up.
Stay as near to me as the night on my shoulder.
Press your hands against my cheeks, like this night’s wind.
You’re closer now
When you’re near enough to touch
Can I flesh-out your face with my thumbs and fingers,
Like a sculptor smoothing black clay?
We’ll lie in the streets,
We two night children, leech-lipped two,
And pull the street’s black asphalt to our chins for warmth
As if it were a satin sheet.
62
1.
as I enter the night
Black House haunts my loneliness
in a punk haven behind
red maple trees glow, first caress
cats and boys crawling like ghosts
and you sitting right there white host
candy eyes of mercy, a bunch of kisses
in our hair immortal bees
– we were nineteen
like two moons in a dream
walking on some million beaches
watery landscapes hit my chest for anger
and I remember this time
we were dancing with sharks
faces figures whispers
hats thrown and a fight
but hey I can’t help it
yeah I’m a jealous guy
– we were thirteen
like two moons in a dream
I drive all day all streets
passing by cold tramp gardens
tours bell barking freaks
my heart’s blind when yours is hidden
radio station’s out of control
postman delivers no message
dark knight of my soul
give me some more courage
– we were nothing
but two moons in a dream
(love surrounds him
lovely great fool
love surrounds love
it got no rule)
fantasies may be my stage
painfuly studded with roses of nostalgia
I’m trapped in the love’s cage
oppressed by a stunning body
and I long to see the sun
your mouth a little weak
pray again for a gun
drown minarets flashing quick
2.
the star turns red
into shadows
i am
standing right there to
reach the edge
of the eighteen
beloved
3.
small hands
rapture
my loneliness
as a tissue cut from midnight sky
and you’re there
down by the twinkle earth
all tenderness
in this fancy of mine
4.
teens have no soul
they have fingers, they have nails
to scratch
bodies in flames
bully like dogs
ancient joy covers their hearts
they build coffins
like Cadillacs
5.
If I can talk slowly
Slowly fires will raise
Up from the golden sea moutains
Millions of eyes, wolves surrounding me
If I can walk gently
Gently archways will turn to doors
We’ll live into mirrors
Smokey lands for smokey sea
If I can touch your face softly
Softly cities will glow
Power won’t march on grace nor thee
Three steps dancing three times, we’re free
Places. Where we laughed –
63
The Mad Girls climb the wet hill,
breathe the sharp air through sick-green lungs.
The Wildest One wanders off like an old cow
and finds a steaming breast inside a footprint in the snow.
She slips it into her glove, holds it close like a darling.
At night, she suckles the lavender tit, still warm
in her hard little hands. She drapes it over her heart--
the closest she will ever come to a Woman Thing.
The girl sleeps on her right side with the breast
tucked between her legs. Her eyes flutter like a rocked doll.
She dreams of Before the Father, when her body
was smooth as a crab, her fingers
tip-toe soft. Outside her bedroom, the Lonesome Boys
hid in trees to watch The Father lift her gown.
Before It Happened, her mouth was a shining crown,
her hair moved like a hungry dog.
In the morning, the girl is who she is again.
Her hair, a soft black brick, her body held together
by hammers. The breast is shriveled up. Gone cold
in her lap. A death-blue fish with one stone eye.
64
Girls, they tell tales of woe before their beds are minced in kind words and dirty tricks. Listen to their hands. They talk. What’s been torn from their bones, the old ones at lazy angles? I want to remember their faces. Those girls I used to/wished to be/wished I’d been. Those girls; all them girls and their dreams. I want to remember their faces, bone and tissue, pride in ridges unattached, left charged in meaning something more. Fuck abstractions in this state. The world is not ending. Adjust.
The specifics of my face are easier to bear than the specifics of our claim to this, the ridges, their bone and tissue, blood, broken. Dead. Yes. The old ones. Known? No. Wanted? Yes. Known? No. But, yes. I know their faces. Smile over ridge any day. My dad’s dad, another ghost on a northern sidewalk, somewhere.
Tell me, do they begin? Hard-pressed for eternity, they dig for more bone. It’s different now. My mom says so. She would know. She’s been here longer. Her mom knew too. We would’ve gotten along, my mom says. We do. I talk to her as much as possible because she knows where I’m going with this.
65
When a man tells u he is different from the rest, read the book of Exodus in ur quiet time . . . this will train ur ankles, feet. Will teach you how to flee. This is important.
When you let them stomp blood out of your belly, cry yourself a “worth it” song. Repeat it in the shower, never mind the wreckage pooling at your feet.
When he side swipes you, make your eyes a cracked windshield. The railroad track holding your insides inside will become rusty . . . do not worry, he has already taken all of the electricity out of you. You cannot hurt anyone.
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