This city remembered I was black and said “no”
years before it came cooing with cash in hand,
so let the water rise until it splashes the marble.
Let them send a white girl to mop my flood later.
Literature
I’d never heard this quiet voice of her, this slow talking, this way of speaking which seemed to be attuned to an inside rhythm matchless in quietness and slowness, as if coming from beyond the walls of the house and the yard and the walls of all other houses and from beyond all Aron Awa and from beyond all the mountains
I remember nothing about that day
but what I do remember is that little was said
I mean you said very little
& I heard much of what you said
am neatly obsessed with warm concrete
am neatly obsessed with my favorite water brand
am neatly obsessed with tercets & triplet hearts
am neatly obsessed with names that a hold a home
am neatly obsessed with streets that overflow in obscurity
am neatly obsessed with trails that go on for miles
am neatly obsessed with packages that read like blankets
I know you’re out there, lost in your pillows
of ash and grief, to rise only to mourn
yesterday, today, and all tomorrows,
wrapped alone in strange strangling sheets, worn
as little shrouds after the little death
of another sunset celebration.
Each night a worship of pink delights, breath
held captive in our private elation
I was in a dumpster.
I was next to the dwindling river;
I was with you. Who knows when we stopped
and if we stopped together.
We gods play tricks,
call it learning lessons.
We keep the house clean.
Scrub dishes before sauces crust.
Wipe counters
and catch crumbs off the edge
In Spain some say: the streets are not yet paved.
If I were not walking here and standing
and standing and looking so early this morning,
I could occupy a chair of metaphysics
Why do I with coffee carve out hunger and the edge
in the morning nearly dire as a man on a ledge?
Because in the dark the peeling eucalyptus trees.
Because you are subtle as a ballot box
perfumed with the oil of cottonseeds
magical with possibilities, odd as a fox
or a girl organizing seven keys.
the third year they had known
tried to listen over
warplanes wild cats & windmills
if only one or the other had a third eye