Poetry

Right over left, left over right, Mama disciplines braids. The Hair Rep melting on her fingers irrigates my corn rows. She sings don't let this harvest pass you by. I struggle to stay a child but I hear her. I'm between her knees and see myself as Papa's overalls coming through the wringer Jewish flat…

Her face is deep mahogany, shined with min oil, a mirror that sucks my face into its shadows, peat absorbing rain. I puff the jeweled pipe, blow smoke directly into her spider-lined lips. I exhale. She inhales, tucks her shoulder under mine. A beaded curtain divides our room, the gentlest type of boundary. We shuffle…

clearing the sidewalk, sweeping a path through the rubble, I found some trash I had to kick off the curbstones. under the wheels of trucks someone took a tumble. a shoppingbag lady watched and began to mutter, but I couldn't hear her, couldn't make out the yammer the crackle of paper dogs in the nutshell…

They should have slept, would have but had to fight the darkness, had to build a fire and bathe a man in flames. No other soap's as good when the dirt is the skin. Black since birth, burnt by birth. His father is not in heaven. No parent of atrocity is in heaven. My father…

A clear-cut wreck, I made the poet nervous Asking what salvation writing could afford. “You mean,” she asked more slowly than she thought, “Like religion?” “Exactly,” I said, knowing She was a religious, solitary woman. It was as though she guessed my real question Was, “Can poetry keep one from the question, ‘Why this?’ Why…

A tiger shark Swims from the mother stream, Away from danger Or hunger, to an unknown Planet orbiting a dreamer's head. My grandfather came from Trinidad Smuggled in like a sack of papaya On a banana boat, to a preacher's Bowl of gumbo & jambalaya, to jazz; The name Brown fitted him like trouble, A…

All the doors in my home are open. There's a pulse outside I want to hear. The phone's unplugged. The pastiche of you on me would be unforgivable now. If there's a god squirming around she sees me & is me. I wish the birds were souls, invisible. I wish they were what I think…

I'll miss formality; Although it showed how I Wore sneakers on a Saturday, I'll miss the Sabbath, Although it showed how I Was spiritually unkempt and common. I'll miss the Sabbath For how it rose, against gravity, above all Spiritually unkempt and common Rituals of the unritualistic, For how it rose against gravity, above all,…

Figs & plums & stolen Red apples were sour When weighed against your body In the kitchen doorway Where July Shone through your flowered dress Worn thin by a hundred washings. Like colors & strength Boiled out of cloth, Some deep & tall smell Made the daylilies cower In early evening. Where did the wordless…