We rise from the snow where we’ ve
lain on our backs and flown like children,
from the imprint of perfect wings and cold gowns,
and we stagger together wine-breathed into town
where our people are building
their armies again, short years after
body bags, after burnings. There is a man
I’ ve come to love after thirty, and we have
our rituals of coffee, of airports, regret.
After love we smoke and sleep
A chicken soup for the rainbow lover’ s soul.
A chicken soup for the lover of chicken soup.
A carnage of birds, a devastation.
Chicken soup for the dried-up garden —
It’ s been a lousy summer sucking us dry.
Chicken soup for the grocery list.
Chicken soup for unwanted potatoes.
Chicken soup for extinct animals.
I stand and listen, head bowed,
to my inner complaint.
Persons passing by think
I am searching for a lost coin.
You’ re fired, I yell inside
after an especially bad episode.
I’ m letting you go without notice
or terminal pay. You just lost
another chance to make good.
But then I watch myself standing at the exit,
What kind of delusion are you under?
The life he hid just knocked you flat.
You see the lightning but not the thunder.
What God hath joined let no man put asunder.
Did God know you’ d marry a rat?
What kind of delusion are you under?
His online persona simply stunned her
as it did you when you started to chat.
You see the lightning but not the thunder.
To the victors go the plunder:
you should crown them with a baseball bat.
What kind of delusion are you under?
I know I promised to stop
talking about her,
but I was talking to myself.
The truth is, she’ s a child
who stopped growing,
so I’ ve always allowed her
to tag along, and when she brings
her melancholy close to me
I comfort her. Naturally
you’ re curious; you want to know
how she became a gnarled branch
veiled in diminutive blooms.
But I’ ve told you all I know.
I was sure she had secrets,
but she had no secrets.
I had to tell her mine.
Hair still Titian,
but Botticelli's grip has loosened —
not now Rubenesque,
and probably never;
Ingres approaches,
but Courbet might capture me.
Could I be surreal?
It seems almost likely —
bells in my ears
and fortresses under;
cones have been set on my eyes.
My spring is gone
and summer's upon me,
rude in its ripening.
I'm espaliered, strung wide and tied,
pinioned, and thus can I fly.
Born, I was born.
Tears represent how much my mother loves me,
shivering and steaming like a horse in rain.
My heart as innocent as Buddha's,
my name a Parisian bandleader's,
I am trying to stand.
Father is holding me and blowing in my ear,
like a glassblower on a flame.
Stars on his blue serge uniform flaunt a feeling
of formal precision and stoicism.
Growing, I am growing now,
as straight as red pines in the low mountains.
Please don't leave, Grandmother Pearl.
I become distressed
Send forth the high falcon flying after the mind
Till it come toppling down from its cold cloud:
The beak of the falcon to pierce it till it fall
Where the simple heart is bowed.
O in wild innocence it rides
The rare ungovernable element,
But once it sways to terror and descent,
The marches of the wind are its abyss,
No wind staying it upward of the breast —
Let mind be proud for this,
And ignorant from what fabulous cause it dropt,
William cut a hole in his Levi’ s pocket
so he could flop himself out in class
behind the girls so the other guys
could see and shit what guts we all said.
All Konga wanted to do over and over
was the rubber band trick, but he showed
everyone how, so nobody wanted to see
anymore and one day he cried, just cried
until his parents took him away forever.
Maya had a Hotpoint refrigerator standing
in his living room, just for his family to show
anybody who came that they could afford it.
for Mack Charles Parker, lynched near Poplarville, Mississippi, April 24, 1959,
recovered from the Pearl River, May 4, 1959
