Chorus (2 page)

a frozen rock

in a hot spot.

me

breaking through to the core.

my rivers are sky and sky and sky

a little golden girl barefoot on the creek plains

arms reaching to the sky/waiting for the storm

giggling with the wind and the rain.

a perfect peach.

my outstretched hand
hol
ding for you a sing
l
e dr
o
p of de
w
.

IV.

i
am
the fish that swims both ways in the river.

-they say because i'm not sure of my direction.

-i say because i wanted you to catch me.

you are the land that
barely breath
es.

-they say because no one had watered your garden

-you say because you were wait
ing
for me to soak into your soil.

we are the trickle the sprinkle the geyser the gush

the creek the crawl the river the wider the ocean the awe . . .

-they say it's because opposites attract.

-we swirl in our whirlpool and laugh at the moon.

The moon prowls 'round

stalking at a distance.

She is a tank.

Her silent rumblings—

pass through no-man's land and

rattle our atmospheres,

the crust;
blue surges,

neap and ebb
,

bend outward our walls

till tiding break

the fasted lines

and we awake

to wave our sullied underclothes

up feebly

at the sky.

And so what that we sewed lashes on the eyelids of the moon?

dilated the sky's cervix and climbed high inside Her womb

In June, I was Oshun, and I applied the night's perfume

to the hollow of my collarbone and invited him to prune

away the shadow shroud I plied upon my loom

And so what that we ignited violet branches in my room?

shook the blooms asunder, blanched the thunder with our tune

We were titans hiding in the shrubs that line the tomb

of Babylon, playful in our nakedness we prattled

daft about how craftily we painted parallaxes

I watched him raptly humming he'd already won the battle

contemplating atoms and his brandied Adam's apple

But no matter had we splattered the canvases of Saturn

built pyr
a
mids on Pluto, or graffitied Venus caverns

He sees me no
cosmic
sovereign though I jewel his crown with stars

A glitterfaced
infatuate
catching drinks slid down the bar

So no matter that we flattered ourselves splinters of the fracture

between the ribs of Eden and the breath of heaven's blackbirds

I am gigglethroated gloater
straddling
to ease his backhurts

licking ligaments and knees ripped on
the edge of
April's laughter

And so what that I refuse to glue back the glass that shattered?

I am prismskinned remembrance staining days with my refraction

We are all
mirrors

We speak
outbursts
& job interview

Logos on our
tongues

One movie quote away from laughter

One text message away from crying

Lips
riddled
with bilingual subtitles in the language

from a world we are not from

In thee business of selling the priceless

Merchants of
imagination

Only good @ what we're good @

Only want 2 go where we never been without leaving our homes

Occupied
without occupations

Believe in books from a time we didn't live in that break belief into fractions

And All we are left with is long division

Down the middle

The heart is a riddle

Perspectives a weapon

Out of shape

Exercising ego
till it looks like confidence

Confined
2 where our pasts have been

Late
2 a meeting with our futures

Instruments
out of tune creating our own time signatures

Out of key

But open 2 becoming our own favorite songs

Dream
s sound better when unexplained

Clouds
look nicer when you're not flying through them

Facial features
feature our
parents' flaws

Microscope your every
breath

Look closer

How many lives do you see?

How many lives do you live in a day?

Paralyzed by
the thought
of who we will be when we are not here

Is being ahead
of
your time choosing 2 be a non-factor in thee now

Juggling questions like the answers are up 2 us

Gravitating
2 a place with less of it

Look at me looking at you
when
looking @ me

How do we look?

We ignore each other because
we don't have anything left
2 say after hello

Unsure of what beauty is anymore

We look in mirrors 4 a story we've never seen before

Ask stars questions we are the answers 2

We are flowers beautiful without ever seeing a picture of ourselves

Watered by the moments we love ourselves

Caught in

We love we

we love us nots

What is more beautiful than we?

We
are hellos we've never met

Faith without church

Fear unlearned

Life without worlds

poetry without words

poems about birchwood
are
bullshit

unless forests of mercantilists burn

tied to tree trunks, skin smoldering

trail of dental records, inheritance

in flames                   motherfuckers

kicked in the nuts postulating posturing

tweed tenure track post-poetry imposters,

we want poems that dance around the ear,

machete and tech 9
pressed against the temple

poems
that will kill someone / tonight—demigods

false idols, crack Donald's Hall of mirrors

no horses head
genocide
            just assholes

squeezing gates
of definition
tighter. they

never get
fucked
. they only give department head:)

we want poems that tie Billy Collins to a chair

and
beat him. we'll see how pretty, witty and
meaningless

it all is: a million stanza march ready to flood his organs

alternate multi-cult cannons shoved in his paternalism

backfire prosody until his blank eyes' black

we want poems to stop lying

in showers of middle-age heartbreak &

cancer. fucking grad students ain't noble.

poems that grab
New Yorker
subscribers

by their neckties,
hang them in
Morning-

side Heights, Harlem, West Wicker Park

River North, University Village like piñatas

summertime
shooting galleries
, gentrified

chicken shit
w
ax-t
h
at-ass mus
e
um displays

of quaint colonialists discove
r
ing a caf
e
.

white poems about whiteness devils & white

powder medicine
men
. poems that stole everything

we own & won't surrender. 40-line reparation pathologies

to jazz writers
who
beat-bopped a century of plagiarism

who beat-box between line breaks, who
cop
language

break /ups and think they in                 OH!         /vating

white poems / little dick slavery poems

blueprints
rolled on the table
in daylight

poems that cut school funds / a(f)firm

white woman
a
ss/
im
ilationists, dic-

tion bigots, cracker
gun barrels
, white poems

w/ m
at
hematic
inconsistencies
, voter fraud

interest-rate hikes, red lines
&
red-stamped

bank loans. poems that
smother
children

in knock-off handbags & Nike shoes

poems starved for attention. a white poem

that destroys a white world that eats itself

rather than consumes
the Other
      finally

a poem that will grab the king's keys & stab

fair maidens and game wardens repeatedly

the royal court bloody, shocked & clawed.

I'll kill your baby.

Then, I'll come for you.

Wenches awake jaw-drooped,

weltering from my machete-clipped wings.

Submerged in vinegar sweat,

clenching Christ crosses, they
moon-chant
:

Night Owl, Night Hag: You Can't Scare Me.

Night Owl
, Night Hag: You're The Enemy!

I'm their martyr

peroxided in scripture
,

now
the
heresy who rejected Adam's body

atop. He cleaved onto Eve

who still left him foolish. I leave men wet

with dreams of women with bird-taloned feet

taking flight greeting angels at the Sea.

Docile
Marys fetter selves to rock,

dirt gardens, preferring the sting of stones

inscribing
maid
on their backs.

Their daughter
s
invent Bloody Lillith

with lights out, terrified

my
likeness will burst through their mirrors
:

Who second-sexed these servants?

Dared they lie beneath men

& raise boys?

Who exiled me from
their
tongues?

I
cut throats
& uteruses

If I, who denied beneathness,

am now beneath,

why not slice open
their bellies

& score
their
wings?

This a bus with wings

Flying me high above the earth

I need red clay forgiveness

I need a nina simone
gun

With no
bullets

Just
fire

Just freedom

I bite down hard at my bottom lip

To remind myself of the pain

To feel something soft on my

Body filled with concrete, metal

And somebody else's needles.

I am a shadow of myself.

I am the after-hour party

The next stop is my stop

Any stop. Just don't stop

Keep driving bus driver

Till we touch
the
first

Cloud in the
entrance to

Heaven
.

There has to be a safe place

For women who had a yesterday

And a series of uncertain

Tomorrows.

This window is
the
entire

World
. Maybe the earth is

Flat
and square
after all
.

Maybe I would stop running

In circles if I just went to

The
edge of
this mutha fucka

And jumped.

This is
better
than
jumping
.

This is a church revival. Ooh. Baby.

They could never save me in those

Pretty places.
Too much
stained

Glass. I need to be able to see

Inside.

I wanna hear my
God in
a simple place.

The loud speaker
at a drive-

through menu.

There u are.
I can hear you talking
to me.

I love French fries. Always have. I can

Fix a lot of things about myself. That one

I ain't changing.

Changing. What the hell is that anyway.

We all the same from the moment we are born.

Aren't we?

I'm moving,
but I'm still me
. I don't have a

Costume
. Not for this life. I will ask God

For a new one next time around, maybe.

Change is good. Things we can't control we

Name good. Getting high is good, when u can

Control it. Check that out.

I just want to eat and sleep for a few months. Wake up

As a movie star in a different movie. And maybe more meat to cover these bones.

This is not my movie. I had to convince myself.

So here I am, a jar full o
f empty promises

and letters never sent.

I couldn't hold him. I didn't know how to hold him.

Who was gonna hold me? Huh?

Why we only
born
with these two hands anyway. Explain that

Shit to me. Women need more than two. What if

Someone
cut
these
off
. It happens.

Or arms. They can just fall off from exhaustion.

What's up modern medicine. Help me grow some new arms!

Why can't we just grow new ones? Humans ain't so special.

Can't just heal our
wound
s by a
touch
or
a
kiss
. That's never enough. We gotta take pills

to fix Our brains. We so smart, we don't know how

to think.

Without some help.

That's all I need. A little help.