I went out walking
in the old neighborhood
Look! more trees on the block
forget-me-nots all around them
ivylantana shining
and geraniums in the window
Twenty years ago
it was believed that the roots of trees
would insert themselves into gas lines
then fallpoisonedon houses and children
This is about the women of that country
Sometimes they spoke in slogans
They said
We patch the roads as we patch our sweetheart’ s trousers
The heart will stop but not the transport
They said
We have ensured production even near bomb craters
Children let your voices sing higher than the explosions
Your jewel box of white balsa strips
and bleached green Czechoslovakian rushes
stands open where you keep it shelved
in the bathroom. Morning and evening
I see you comb its seawrack tangle of shell,
stone, wood, glass, metal, bone, seed
for the bracelet, earring, necklace, brooch
or ring you need. Here's brass from Nepal,
Acorn-brown, the girl's new nipples
draw the young men's rooster eyes
where a woman is fitting a man to her mouth,
breathing fire, holding for dear life.
Green almonds in their shells:
she knifes them open one at a time and
hands him a slick teardrop, cool white
tasting cool white. Nothing
It’ s the way they cannot understand the window
they buzz and buzz against, the bees that take
a wrong turn at my door and end up thus
in a drift at first of almost idle curiosity,
cruising the room until they find themselves
smack up against it and they cannot fathom how
the air has hardened and the world they know
with their eyes keeps out of reach as, stuck there
with all they want just in front of them, they must
fling their bodies against the one unalterable law
of things — this fact of glass — and can only go on
Yes, the heart aches, but you know or think you know it could be
indigestion after all, the stomach uttering its after-lunch cantata
for clarinet and strings, while blank panic can be just a two-o'clock
shot of the fantods, before the afternoon comes on in toe-shoes
and black leotard, her back a pale gleaming board-game where all
is not lost though the hour is late and you've got light pockets.
i was left out
i was chosen second & then left out
i was left
handed i was left
to fend for myself i
was the second in
command the second
in line i came
without direction
*
i want the
milk i want my
first pick i want
choice & all its implications there was a
*
residue of
scar
between us it chafed
when we rubbed our
chests together
*
hello, brother, hello?
hello in there, brother, can you
hear me? it's a long
tunnel to the grave speak
my dad's going to give me a self
back.
i've made an altar called
The Altar for Healing the Father & Child,
& asked him what i could do
for him so he would
do nice for me. he said i should stop
saying bad things about him &, since
i've said just about everything bad
i can think of &, since... well,
no, i change my
mind, i can't promise
him that. but even healing is
negotiable, so, if he's in
heaven (or trying
to get in), it wouldn't hurt
Every town with black Catholics has a St. Peter Claver’ s.
My first was nursery school.
Miss Maturin made us fold our towels in a regulation square and nap on army cots.
No mother questioned; no child sassed.
In blue pleated skirts, pants, and white shirts,
we stood in line to use the open toilets
and conserved light by walking in darkness.
Unsmiling, mostly light-skinned, we were the children of the middle class, preparing to take our parents’ places in a world that would demand we fold our hands and wait.
In the backyard of our house on Norwood,
there were five hundred steel cages lined up,
each with a wooden box
roofed with tar paper;
inside, two stories, with straw
for a bed. Sometimes the minks would pace
back and forth wildly, looking for a way out;
or else they’ d hide in their wooden houses, even when
we’ d put the offering of raw horse meat on their trays, as if
