Of many reasons I love you here is one
the way you write me from the gate at the airport
so I can tell you everything will be alright
so you can tell me there is a bird
trapped in the terminalall the people
ignoring it because they do not know
what to do with it except to leave it alone
until it scares itself to death
it makes you terribly terribly sad
Bustle and caw. Recall the green heat
rising from the new minted earth, granite
and basalt, proto-continents shuffling
and stacking the deck, first shadows flung
from the ultraviolet haze. A fern
uncurls from the swamp, the microscopic furnace
of replication warms the world, one
becoming two, two four: exponential blossom.
Lush with collision, the teacup balance
of x and y, cells like balloons
escaping into the sky — then the dumbstruck
hour, unmoored by a river,
Birdsong, face it, some male machine
gone addled — repeat, repeat — the damage
keeps doing, the world ending then starting,
the first word the last, etc. It's that
etcetera. How to love. Is a wire
just loose? Build an ear for that. Fewer, they say.
So many fewer, by far. He's showing off
to call her back. Or claiming the tree.
First light of day in Mississippi
son of laborer & of house wife
it says so on the official photostat
not son of fisherman & child fugitive
from cottonfields & potato patches
from sugarcane chickens & well-water
from kerosene lamps & watermelons
mules named jack or jenny & wagonwheels,
years of meaningless farm work
work Work WORK WORK WORK —
“Papa pull you outta school bout March
to stay on the place & work the crop”
— her own earliest knowledge
of human hopelessness & waste
Now, when he and I meet, after all these years,
I say to the bitch inside me, don’ t start growling.
He isn’ t a trespasser anymore,
Just an old acquaintance tipping his hat.
My voice says, “Nice to see you,”
As the bitch starts to bark hysterically.
He isn’ t an enemy now,
Where are your manners, I say, as I say,
“How are the children? They must be growing up.”
At a kind word from him, a look like the old days,
Openly, yes,
With the naturalness
Of the hippopotamus or the alligator
When it climbs out on the bank to experience the
Sun, I do these
Things which I do, which please
No one but myself. Now I breathe and now I am sub-
Merged; the blemishes stand up and shout when the object
There are eyes, glasses even, but still he can’ t see
what the world sees seeing him.
They know an image of him they themselves created.
He knows his own: fine-lined from foot to finger,
each limb adjusted, because it’ s had to,
to achieve finally flight —
This exclusive shit I don’ t share with the world.
50 Cent
I, Herman, made medicinal — concocted potions in ways my former’ s was hearsay;
Turned palomas christened Zora on to formulas husbands roll over n mitzvah.
I, a black lad, proud Virginian, selling out Liberty Hall n pinched w/ stickpins
in Woodlawn, do bequeath my next-to-last oratory:
I will die in Paris with a rainstorm,
on a day I already remember,
I will die in Paris — and I don't shy away —
perhaps on a Thursday, as today is, in autumn.
It will be Thursday, because today, Thursday, as I prose
these lines, I've put on my humeri in a bad mood,
and, today like never before, I've turned back,
with all of my road, to see myself alone.
After the second conference, I would be cast in the role of a young dancer with a prestigious New York City ballet company. I would be cast in the role of the mother, a former dancer now amateur artist, whose career ended at 28 when she became pregnant. I would be cast in the role of the exotic beauty who is more in touch with her sensuality. I would be cast in the role of the director, a cruel and demanding genius who would sleep with the ingenue. I would be cast in the role of someone selected to compete for the part alongside several other dancers.
