Open our mouths for a drink. Rather be radical
Than a fool. Oh and no,
We’re not interested in killing
White people or making them
Work. Matter of truth, some snorted
Cocaine until folk started calling it
White lady. Slavery is a bad idea.
The more you look like me, the more we
Agree. Sometimes you is everybody.
The blk mind is a continuous
Mind. There is a we. I am among them.
I am one of the ones. I belong. Oom boom
Ba boom. I live there where
We have a right to expect something of the brother.
Hooking and crooking or punching the clock,
It’s got to get done. That
Expectation. Stunning. Incantatory. Blk.
Power in our 24-hour
Barbershops. Power in the Stateville
Correctional Center. Power broke
Whether I have a car note or not.
Power under a quilt that won’t unravel, though
I never met the woman who sewed it
Or the woman for whom it was a gift
Before it finally came to me. The blk mind
Is a continuous mind. I am not a narrative
Form, but dammit if I don’t tell a story.
All land owned is land once stolen.
So the blues people of the world walk
On water. We will not die. Blk music.
Blk rage. Blk city of the soul
In a very cold town. Blk ice is ice you can’t see.
A Young Man
We stand together on our block, me and my son,
Neighbors saying our face is the same, but I know
He’s better than me: when other children move
Toward my daughter, he lurches like a brother
Meant to put them down. He is a bodyguard
On the playground. He won’t turn apart from her,
Empties any enemy, leaves them flimsy, me
Confounded. I never fought for so much—
I calmed my daughter when I could cradle
My daughter; my son swaggers about her.
He won’t have to heal a girl he won’t let free.
They are so small. And I, still, am a young man.
In him lives my black anger made red.
They play. He is not yet incarcerated.
II
Duplex
The opposite of rape is understanding
A field of flowers called paintbrushes—
A field of flowers called paintbrushes,
Though the spring be less than actual.
Though the spring be less than actual,
Men roam shirtless as if none ever hurt me.
Men roam that myth. In truth, one hurt me.
I want to obliterate the flowered field,
To obliterate my need for the field
And raise a building above the grasses,
A building of prayer against the grasses,
My body a temple in disrepair.
My body is a temple in disrepair.
The opposite of rape is understanding.
Riddle
We do not recognize the body
Of Emmett Till. We do not know
The boy’s name nor the sound
Of his mother wailing. We have
Never heard a mother wailing.
We do not know the history
Of this nation in ourselves. We
Do not know the history of our-
Selves on this planet because
We do not have to know what
We believe we own. We believe
We own your bodies but have no
Use for your tears. We destroy
The body that refuses use. We use
Maps we did not draw. We see
A sea so cross it. We see a moon
So land there. We love land so
Long as we can take it. Shhh. We
Can’t take that sound. What is
A mother wailing? We do not
Recognize music until we can
Sell it. We sell what cannot be
Bought. We buy silence. Let us
Help you. How much does it cost
To hold your breath underwater?
Wait. Wait. What are we? What?
What on Earth are we? What?
Good White People
Not my phrase, I swear,
But my grandmother’s
When someone surprised her
By holding open the door
Or by singing that same high C
Stephanie Mills holds
Near the end of “I Have Learned
To Respect the Power of Love”
Or by gifting her with a turkey
On the 24th of December
After a year of not tipping her
Not to clean. You’ll have to forgive
My grandmother with her good
Hair and her good white people
And her certified good slap across
Your mouth. Crack the beaten door
To eat or sing, but do not speak
Evil. Dead bad black woman
I still love, she didn’t know
What we know. In America
Today, anyone can turn on
A TV or look out a window
To see several kinds of bird
In the air while each face watching
Smiles and spits, cusses and sings
A single anthem of blood—
All is stained. She was ugly.
I’m ugly. You’re ugly too.
No such thing as good white people.
Correspondence
after The Jerome Project by Titus Kaphar
(oil, gold leaf, and tar on wood panels;
7" × 10½" each)
I am writing to you from the other side
Of my body where I have never been
Shot and no one’s ever cut me.
I had to go back this far in order
To present myself as a whole being
You’d heed and believe in. You can trust me
When I am young. You can know more
When you move your hands over a child,
Swift and without the interruptions
We associate with penetration.
The young are hard for you
To kill. May be harder still to hear a kid cry
Without looking for a sweet
To slip into his mouth. Won’t you hold him?
Won’t you coo toward the years before my story
Is all the fault of our imaginations?
We can make me
Better if you like: write back. Or take the trip.
I’ve dressed my wounds with tar
And straightened a place for you
On the cold side of this twin bed.
Trojan
When a hurricane sends
Winds far enough north
To put our power out,
We only think of winning
The war bodies wage
To prove the border
Between them isn’t real.
An act of God, so sweet.
No TV. No novel. No
Recreation but each
Other, and neither of us
Willing to kill. I don’t care
That I don’t love my lover.
Knowing where to stroke
In little light, knowing what
Will happen to me and how
Soon, these rank higher
Than a clear view
Of the face I’d otherwise
Flay had I some training
In combat, a blade, a few
Matches. Candles are
Romantic because
We understand shadows.
We recognize the shape
Of what once made us
Come, so we come
Thinking of approach
In ways that forgo
Substance. I’m breathing—
Heaving now—
In my own skin, and I
Know it. Romance is
An act. The perimeter
Stays intact. We make out
So little that I can’t help
But imagine my safety.
I get to tell the truth
About what kind
Of a person lives and who
Dies. Barefoot survivors.
Damned heroes, each
Corpse lit on a pyre.
Patroclus died because
He could not see
What he really was inside
His lover’s armor.
The Legend of Big and Fine
Long ago, we used two words
For the worth of a house, a car,
A woman—all the same to men
Who claimed them: things
To be entered, each to suffer
Wear and tear with time, but
Greater than the love for these
Was the strong little grin
One man offered another
Saying, You lucky. You got you
A big, fine ______________.
Hard to imagine so many men
Waiting on each other to be
Recognized, every crooked
Tooth in our naming mouths
Ready like the syllables
Of a very short sentence, all
Of us crying mine, like babies who
Grab for what must be beautiful
Since someone else saw it.
The Peaches
I choose these two, bruised—
Maybe too ripe to take, fondling
As I toss them each
Into my cart, the smaller
With its stem somewhat
Intact—because they remind me
Of the girls who won’t be girls
Much longer, both sealed
And secured like a monarch’s
Treasure in a basement below
The basement of the house
I inherited. I’ve worked hard and want
To bring them something sweet
So they know I’ve missed them
More than anyone else. But first,
I weigh the peaches, pay
For them, make the short drive
To my childhood
Home of latches, mazes,
And locked doors. Every key
Mine now, though I’ve hidden a few
From myself. I pride myself
On my gifts. I can fashion for you
A place to play, and when you think
It’s dark there, I hand you
Fruit like two swollen bulbs
Of light you can hold on to,
Watch your eyes brighten as you eat.
Night Shift
When I am touched, brushed, and measured, I think of myself
As a painting. The artist works no matter the lack of sleep. I am made
Beautiful. I never eat. I once bothered with a man who called me
Snack, Midnight Snack to be exact. I’d oblige because he hurt me
With a violence I mistook for desire. I’d get left hanging
In one room of his dim house while he swept or folded laundry.
When you’ve been worked on for so long, you never know
You’re done. Paint dries. Midnight is many colors. Black and blue
Are only two. The man who tinted me best kept me looking a little
Like a chore. How do you say prepared
In French? How do you draw a man on the night shift? Security
At the museum for the blind, he eats to stay
Awake. He’s so full, he never has to eat again. And the moon goes.
Shovel
I am not the man who put a bullet in its brain,
But I am commissioned to dispose of the corpse:
Lay furniture plastic next to it and roll it over
Until it is wrapped, tape with duct tape until
It is completely contained, lay next to that
Containment a tarp and roll it over until it is
Wrapped again, take cheap hardware twine
And tie it and tie it like a proper gift, a gift
A good child will give up on opening
Even come Christmas morning. I am here
To ignore the stench and throw the dead over
My left shoulder and carry it to the bed
Of a stolen truck. I did not steal the truck,
But there it is, outside the door, engine
Running. I do the driving and assume someone
Else must scrub the floors of the body’s blood,
Scrub the body’s last room of its evidence.
I do the driving and sing whatever love songs
The truck’s radio affords me all the way
To the edge of anywhere hiking families refuse
To wander, and I dig and dig and dig as
Undertakers did before the advent of machinery,
Then lift, again, the dead, and throw, again,
The dead—quite tired now, winded really,
But my hands and shoulders and arms and legs
Unstoppable. I dump the body into the hole
I myself made, and I hum, some days, one
Of those love songs, some days, a song I myself
Make in my spinning head, which is wet
With sweat that drips into the hole I will not call
A grave. I sweat into the earth as I repair it.
I completely cover the dead before I return
The truck where I assume someone else must
Scrub it—engine off—of the body’s evidence,
And I sing, again, those songs because I know
The value of sweet music when we need to pass
The time without wondering what rots beneath our feet.
The Long Way
Your grandfather was a murderer.
I’m glad he’s dead.
He invented the toothbrush,
But I don’t care to read his name
On the building I walk through
To avoid the rain. He raped women
Who weren’t yet women.
I imagine the wealth he left
When you turn red. I imagine you as a baby
Bouncing on a rapist’s knee. I like my teeth
Clean. I like to stay warm
And healthy. I get it. Then I get it
Again: my oral hygiene and your memory
Avoiding each other
Like a girl who walks the long way
To miss the neighborhood bully, like the bully
Who’d really rather beat up on somebody
New. I can’t help you. I can’t hug you.
I can’t grip your right hand, though
It never held a gun, though it never
Covered a lovely mouth, and you can’t pay me
To cross the ground floor without wishing
I could spit on or mar some slick surface
And not think of who will have to do the cleaning.
We’d all still be poor. I’d end up drenched
Going around. You’d end remembering
What won’t lead to a smile that gleams
In dark places. Some don’t know
How dark. Some do.
Dear Whiteness
Come, love, come lie down, love, with me
In this king-size bed where we go numb
For each other letting sleep take us into
Ease, a slumber made only when I hold
You or you hold me so close I have no idea
Where I begin—where do you end?—where you
Tell me lies. Tell me sweet little lies
About what I mean to you when
I’ve labored all day and wish to come
Home like a war hero who lost an arm.
That’s how I fight
to win you, to gain
Ground you are welcome to divide
And name. See how this mouth opens
To speak what language you allow me
With the threat of my head cradled safe.
Tell me lies. Tell me sweet little lies
Of what you require, intimacy so industrious
That when I wake to brush you from my own
Teeth I see you in the mirror. I won’t stay
Too long. When you look in that mirror, it
Will be clean. You’ll be content
Seeing only yourself. Was I ever there?
Tell me lies. Tell me. Tell me lies.
Of the Swan
The luck of it: my ordinary body
Once under
A god. No night ends his
Care, how
He finishes a fixed field, how he
Hollows
A low tunnel. He released me
After. Why
Else pray like a woman
Ruined
By an ever-bitter extremity?
Men die,
But God’s soul rises out of its black
Noose, finds
Bared skin a landscape prepared
For use—
Immortality requires worship.
I was
The Lord’s opening on Earth,
A woman
With feathers strewn round
My hide.
Entertainment Industry
Scared to see a movie
All the way through
I got to scream each scene
Duck and get down
Mass shooting blues
When you see me coming
You see me running
When you see me running
You run too
I don’t have kids
Cuz I’d have to send them to school
Ain’t that safe as any
Plan for parenthood
Mass shooting blues
When you see me coming
You see me running
If you can beat a bullet
You oughta run too
Stake
I am a they in most of America.
Someone feels lost in the forest
Of we, so he can’t imagine
A single tree. He can’t bear it.
A cross. A crucifixion. Such
A Christian. All that wood
Headed his way in the fact
Of a man or a woman who
Might as well be a secret, so
Serious his need to see inside.
To cut down. To tell. How
Old will I get to be in a nation
That believes we can grow out
Of a grave? Can reach. Climb
High as the First State Bank.