mumber 3
This city remembered I was black and said “no”
years before it came cooing with cash in hand,
so let the water rise until it splashes the marble.
Let them send a white girl to mop my flood later.
I’d never heard this quiet voice of her, this slow talking, this way of speaking which seemed to be attuned to an inside rhythm matchless in quietness and slowness, as if coming from beyond the walls of the house and the yard and the walls of all other houses and from beyond all Aron Awa and from beyond all the mountains
I whisk myself away, and
appetite follows. My stomach growls
when it’s horny–I mean hungry.
One of my favorite albums is
Sex and Food by Unknown Mortal Orchestra.
He was like the town bike
everyone got a ride. He was like a ride
that made me vomit. He was like the vomit
I spewed in a Wendy’s parking lot.
He was like a parking lot I lay
down in and let the hail beat and bruise me.
He was like a bruise you discover but can’t
remember where it came from.
What did you smack into?
By now you know his hands
were threats. By now you know
his hands were switches. He was like
the switching breeze that smacked
the chimes against my house the morning
I found out he’d hung himself.
it’s the spaceship of your parents’
generation — dark glass in the dark
glass that is / the galaxy. plus
didgeridoo. I want to be heard
Spring came early, so the calendar
can stay in tune with the moon.
No wonder I’m tired:
I’ve lost two days’ sleep!
In all my years of collecting, there’s only one thing I had as a child that I’ve not been able to find. A clear plastic sectional pen. Actually, it was more like a wand.