Pleasure Dome. Yusef Komunyakaa
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mind’s on Americus,
Georgia. Caught up in paperwork
of murder & audio surveillance,
weapons experts tread air
in oxblood Bostonians.
—for Nicolas Guillen
Lover
A turning away from flowers.
A cutting out of
stone understands, naked
before the sculptor.
I watch you down Telegraph Avenue
till you sprout into a quivering
song color.
But I hope you fall
from your high horse
& break your damn neck.
Reminiscence
I had brainphotos
of riding you down into music.
I tried to kiss you back then,
but didn’t know the sweet punishment
of a tongue inside another voice.
You were a tree breaking with mangoes,
bent toward deeper earth,
& ran out into the world
before me. Songs floated ahead
like comic-strip balloons
where they could breathe hard
& blow dreams apart.
The green light kept going
beyond Blueberry Hill.
Bandages of silence
didn’t conceal unsolved crimes,
& I deserted my voice crawling
over cobblestone.
My ribcage a harp
for many fingers.
I’ve seen overturned deathcarts
with their wheels churning
Guadalajara mornings,
but your face will always be
a private country.
Waiting for a Tree Through a Window
The coffeepot percolates,
a dying man’s last breath.
Alone at this onyx window
I’ve seen Balanced Rock
perched on the brink of midnight.
Hard times wrestle water up hills,
mineshafts worked down to daybreak.
At this window, I’ve witnessed
knowledge of hyacinth & burdock,
how night snow cascades & out of nowhere
praise flashes like bobwhites
out of dead grass.
I want to tell them, when it comes,
not to question my death,
the moon will have its say.
The Lamp Carrier
He swings his lamp into a hovel,
a circle of vermillion.
Hunger rushes forward.
He steps back, but the raw odor
reaches out & hugs him.
Someone whispers,
“Our lives fallen angels.
Songs stolen from the mouths
of our children, worrybeads
snatched from dead fingers.”
Another voice from a year
of darkness says, “Ask Captain Nobones—
the one with hemlock in his lapel,
who always has the flamenco dancer,
Maria, on his arm.” The lamp
shimmies up, out of the hole
in the floor of the summer night,
& disappears in eucalyptus scent.
The Life & Times of Billy Boy
His mother would sigh,
“God giveth & He taketh.
My dear child of a dog’s luck.
A precious thorn works
deeper into my side.”
When Billy Boy was seven
he didn’t know the sound of his name,
like talking to an oak.
He’d fall in constant love
with ravens & bluejays,
then urge their perch
on the crowns of scarecrows,
thinking of himself
as a conclusion
of their wings.
A House of Snow
A woman stepped out of no-
where, humpbacked, struggling
with the moon. She asked me if
I was lonely, if I was happy.
Before I could lie, she said,
“In many ways, you remind me
of what’s-his-name, who sees poetry
in the leaf. In the ugliest,
smallest thing. He says katydids
influence tongues. His hands are
roots, his song a wolf’s lost
in a cloud of migratory birds.”
Recital of Water Over Stones
We wait to see you nail
your voice to the floor.
You stand in a doorway
talking clothes off dreams.
The groupie in the front row
wears lavender stockings,
& knows Blue Nun & Panama Red.
She stares at the glass ceiling
of crimson birds,
as if you hide among rafters.
You step up to the podium,
drag on a cigarette, touch
the half-dead microphone,
& jazz leaps into your mouth.
It sounds like you’ve lived
dog days & slept in a hollowed log,
as you lead us through orange
groves, exposing white bones
& drums buried under dirt.
—for Robert Creeley