Reading & Books

My master/father sent me up from South
Carolina to Boston as a nine-year-old.
My mother's illiterate silence has been a death.
I wonder if she still labors in his fields.
His sister, dutiful but cold as snow,
gave me a little room in her house, below
the stairs with the Irish servants, who hated me
for the fatal flaw in my genealogy.
For the first time in my life I am at home
in this bevy of scholars, my first family.
Here, the wallpapers welcome me into every room,
and the mirrors see me, not my pedigree.

You give me a little courage, Mary,
in your skittish dedication to her highness;
I too can dare as humbleness may dare;
if there’ s anywhere to speak with you, it’ s here
at the wordy Anglo-Saxon periphery
of the universe’ s one great surge of praise

though I’ m lost here. Where’ s the joyful noise?
the syllables I managed to memorize
before they were weighted down by meaning?
and what’ s all this complicated rhyme?
Don’ t mistake me — I’ m not complaining;
it’ s just not my notion of a psalm

Know you fair, on what you look;
Divinest love lies in this book,
Expecting fire from your eyes,
To kindle this his sacrifice.
When your hands untie these strings,
Think you’ have an angel by th’ wings.
One that gladly will be nigh,
To wait upon each morning sigh.
To flutter in the balmy air
Of your well-perfumed prayer.
These white plumes of his he’ ll lend you,
Which every day to heaven will send you,
To take acquaintance of the sphere,
And all the smooth-fac’ d kindred there.

Like a fawn from the arrow, startled and wild,
A woman swept by us, bearing a child;
In her eye was the night of a settled despair,
And her brow was o’ ershaded with anguish and care.

She was nearing the river — in reaching the brink,
She heeded no danger, she paused not to think!
For she is a mother — her child is a slave —
And she’ ll give him his freedom, or find him a grave!

Very soon the Yankee teachers
Came down and set up school;
But, oh! how the Rebs did hate it, —
It was agin’ their rule.

Our masters always tried to hide
Book learning from our eyes;
Knowledge did’ nt agree with slavery —
’ Twould make us all too wise.

They dropped the charges of homicide, filed new charges of
terrorism, dropped the charges of terrorism, filed
new charges of public nudity, dropped the charges of
public nudity, filed new charges of lewd and
lascivious behavior. A spokesman for the FBI
said they found him on the hood of an SUV in a part
of town known as the “Fruit Loop”. His penis was in another
man’ s mouth and in the front seat were vials containing a rare
strand of bacteria known to cause blindness in rats. They
dropped the charges of public nudity and filed new

There are rooftops
made of cloud remnants

gathered by a trader
dabbling in car parts and burlap

At night, I dive onto the breeze
fermenting above the dirt

and dream that I am a crocodile
a tin of shoe polish, an audience of two

In the morning, before the smallest yawn
becomes a noodle, I am offered

a ribbon of yellow smoke
I opt for fuzzy rocks and clawed water

and, of course, the perishable window
I am one of the last computer

chain errors to be illuminated
I tell you there are rooftops

In the rain in the rain in the rain in the rain in Spain.
Does it rain in Spain?
Oh yes my dear on the contrary and there are no bull fights.
The dancers dance in long white pants
It isn’ t right to yence your aunts
Come Uncle, let’ s go home.
Home is where the heart is, home is where the fart is.
Come let us fart in the home.
There is no art in a fart.
Still a fart may not be artless.
Let us fart an artless fart in the home.
Democracy.
Democracy.
Bill says democracy must go.
Go democracy.
Go

Having returned at last and being carefully seated
On the floor — somebody else's floor, as usual —
Far away across that ocean which looked
Through Newport windows years ago — somebody else's livingroom —
Another messed-up weedy garden
Tall floppy improbably red flowers
All the leaves turned over in the rain
Ridged furry scrotum veins