"Mugabe Rejects Charges that Detainees are Tortured"

The government thought we were terrorists

because we looked at a house.    White people

would never live in such a house, they thought.

My parents were held for hours, questions,

questions, questions.

While my brother and sister and I cried

in the car, answerless,

soldiers practiced shooting sacks

of corn meal. They looked in at us

from outside of the car, gleaming black

skin pearled in sweat. The weight, they said

through foggy windows,

the weight was accurate to judge.

They must have thought us too young.

The want was after they let us go, no explanation given.

My parents read us the Passover story

and I waited in bed for some dark stranger

to brush my hair back and say, Yes

I will take you into the dark

made of mothers’ wailings,

I will show you what it means

to shed blood.

Faith

God and I wrestle beneath the space-darkness.

We are naked, and He is perfect, muscled.

My skin mottles with sweat.

I don't even remember before our bodies,

intertwined roots digging into the same

dank turf, looking for water.

My right thigh sinks into itself,

muscle holding its bloodied breath.

I cannot think of winning.

The Danger of Further Abstraction

When the top half is already taken over by the hollow

of whiteness and tonal things tried-to-do texturely,

the begging canvas needs your hands all over it,

rough lover of the fabric so-and-sos. Compulsion

is the key word in all of this tousle-bouting. As in

I’m going to beat my hands into you, over and over,

the yellows forming, the blues foaming up in your cheeks,

I’m going to ruin the space that needs fulfillment.

Leander

where is the light

where is the light

Love, god, build me new eyes

build into the darkness

a You I can point towards

Hero, pull out your bright heart

the light is where

the light is where

you burn in my lungs

Untitled

Where art thou, O white face, and thy staring

back into the world of me?

Where the last time I took your hand

and you felled me in the forest?

I was broken and sought you to heal me,

like God would touch me

with his golden hand. Where, O white face,

thy suffering lips that bind

me by pleasure to this earth? I sought

your counsel in the forest’s heart—

I had lain on the dark moss that you remake

me in your image. O beauty—

O holy moment—place my burning coal heart

upon your tongue. It longs for this.           

"War of the Fairies"

Let me slide a little bit inside your skin, boy, taste

how you taste my lovely tongue as it gyrates.

Feel how I lick your sweat caves. See, it’s all called

learning, as in, I was taught this once

and now I’ll pupil your eyes to look at me

beast-like because there’s blood galore beneath.

You can let it all out and swirl it down the drain

or drink a little, but oh! how gauche the new-wave

vampires living it up off the page—want a coffin?

Eat out my torso and climb inside. I wouldn’t call

these feelings, I would call them exactings.

Your tongue aches to lap at my saltwater.

I’m trying to remain a purveyor of our bodies’

museum. Arms folded, I walk inside of us, History

guiding all my little footsteps. See this panting?

It’s called “War of the Fairies,” and those your teeth

in my shoulder-blade. Tell me about your strokes.

What color were you trying to exact my skin?

Ithakos

“For nowise, methinks, didst thou come hither on foot.” Odyssey 16.59

I’ve gone as far North as I can now and all the feathers

cling to the women’s bodies, all the echoes of handwriting scrawled

with intent on the canvas faces of humantide. I am not dreaming

up any such dark forces, intent on meaning, I am dreaming

of lunch and ladies cloaked in organza and bright jellyfish cloth—

the sequins scream into my heart and too, the red-roving of love

written on gesso’d taut. How can all these women walk on glass

giraffe feet? How can they strut into all the canvas’ blank spaces,

intent on not stepping onto the lines, killing their mothers?

Theirs is a world of games and loveliness and something like machines

guiding their motions. I am but a petty squab, a brushstroke

of darkness upon their porcelain cheeks. Look now, we are all laughing.

Look now, my heart grows feathers and flies past all the sunstained

buildings into impossible upward North. No turning back.