Pleasure Dome. Yusef Komunyakaa
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fall apart
in our hands, the whole year
stripped down to a penny’s
seed grain, huddled under
last night’s dogstar.
Places like Portales & Amarillo,
the only road out of town coughs
blood & dust. Tied to the ground
with songs, we sit along roadsides
like grass waiting for blades.
We clutch beads & pray our children grow
blind, stitching closed black pockets
while the stone-gatherers close in.
Property lines & night-blooming cereus
rush up to us, corrugated roofs
remembering the sky in rearview mirrors.
We leave voices buried under a sycamore,
ashes in a vase feeding its roots.
Following crops & shooting stars,
birds whirl south before a rainstorm
scrubs the stone floor
of the Panhandle. Each day is now
a yellow tractor rusting under a tin shed
where we feel our clothes grow thinner.
Corrigenda
I take it back.
The crow doesn’t have red wings.
They’re pages of dust.
The woman in the dark room
takes the barrel of a .357 magnum
out of her mouth, reclines
on your bed, a Helena Rubinstein smile.
I’m sorry, you won’t know your father
by his darksome old clothes.
He won’t be standing by that tree.
I haven’t salted the tail
of the sparrow.
Erase its song from this page.
I haven’t seen the moon
fall open at the golden edge of our sleep.
I haven’t been there
like the tumor in each of us.
There’s no death that can
hold us together like twin brothers
coming home to bury their mother.
I never said there’s a book inside
every tree. I never said I know how
the legless beggar feels when
the memory of his toes itch.
If I did, drunkenness
was then my god & naked dancer.
I take it back.
I’m not a suicidal mooncalf;
you don’t have to take my shoelaces.
If you must quote me, remember
I said that love heals from inside.
Copacetic
False Leads
Hey! Mister Bloodhound Boss,
I hear you’re looking for Slick Sam
the Freight Train Hopper.
They tell me he’s a crack shot.
He can shoot a cigarette out of a man’s mouth
thirty paces of an owl’s call.
This morning I glimpsed red
against that treeline.
Aïe, aïe, mo gagnin toi.
Wise not to let night catch you out there.
You can get so close to a man
you can taste his breath.
They say Slick Sam’s a mind reader:
he knows what you gonna do
before you think it.
He can lead you into quicksand
under a veil of swamp gas.
Now you know me, Uncle T,
I wouldn’t tell you no lie.
Slick Sam knows these piney woods
& he’s at home here in cottonmouth country.
Mister, your life could be worth
less than a hole in a plug nickel.
I bet old Slick Sam knows
about bloodhounds & black pepper,
how to put a bobcat into a crocus sack.
Soliloquy: Man Talking to a Mirror
Working night shift
panhandling Larimer Square
ain’t been easy.
A pair of black brogans
can make a man
limp badly.
Lawd, this flophouse
has a hangover—
you just can’t
love hard knowledge
this way, Buddy Boy.
Big shouldered,
you’re still a born pushover,
a tree climber
in the devil’s skull.
You hide behind panes
of unwashed light,
grazing with stubborn goats.
Mister Big Shot,
once you dredged down
years towards China
but didn’t find
a pot of gold—
chopped down a forest of doors
& told deadly machines
where to go.
Now you’re counting taverns,
dumbfounded
by a hunk of oily keys
to foul weather.
Tangled in the bell ropes
of each new day,
scribbling on the bottom line
of someone else’s dream,
loitering
in public courtyards
telling statues where to fall.
The Way the Cards Fall
Why did you stay away
so long? I’ve buried another
husband, since I last saw you
holding to the horizon.
I