Pleasure Dome. Yusef Komunyakaa
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huddled like stones,
my sister rocked her Shirley Temple
doll to sleep. Three fat ushers fanned
my grandmamas, used smelling salts.
All my best friends—Cowlick,
Sneaky Pete, Happy Jack, Pie Joe,
& Comedown Jones.
I could smell lavender,
a tinge of dust. Their mouths,
palms of their hands
stained with mulberries.
Daddy posed in his navy-blue suit
as doubting Thomas: some twisted
soft need in his eyes, wondering if
I was just another loss
he divided his days into.
Untitled Blues
after a photography by Yevgeni Yevtushenko
I catch myself trying
to look into the eyes
of the photo, at a black boy
behind a laughing white mask
he’s painted on. I
could’ve been that boy
years ago.
Sure, I could say
everything’s copacetic,
listen to a Buddy Bolden cornet
cry from one of those coffin-
shaped houses called
shotgun. We could
meet in Storyville,
famous for quadroons,
with drunks discussing God
around a honky-tonk piano.
We could pretend we can’t
see the kitchen help
under a cloud of steam.
Other lurid snow jobs:
night & day, the city
clothed in her see-through
French lace, as pigeons
coo like a beggar chorus
among makeshift studios
on wheels—Vieux Carré
belles having portraits painted
twenty years younger.
We could hand jive
down on Bourbon & Conti
where tap dancers hold
to their last steps,
mammy dolls frozen
in glass cages. The boy
locked inside your camera,
perhaps he’s lucky—
he knows how to steal
laughs in a place
where your skin
is your passport.
Jumping Bad Blues
I’ve played cool,
hung out with the hardest
bargains, but never copped a plea.
I’ve shot dice heads-up
with Poppa Stoppa
& helped him nail
his phenomenal luck
to the felt floor with snake eyes.
I’ve fondled my life in back rooms,
called Jim Crow out of his mansion
in Waycross, Georgia, & taught
him a lesson he’ll never forget.
Initials on Aspens
The scar tissue says
t. c. from dallas
loves gertrude logan,
etc. Flesh & metaphor.
Sizzling iron, initials,
whole families branded
as private property.
I am taken back
to where torture chambers
crank up at midnight
like gothic gristmills
in the big house
& black tarantulas
of blood cling to faces
where industrial
revolution repeatedly
groans in the brain.
Family Tree
I know better
than a whip
across my back,
eyes swearing
all the pain. Her father
cut down so young
in this stone garden.
She knows how easy death
takes root in a love song.
That long chain
in the red dust.
Geechee
bloodholler—
my mother
married at 15,
with my ear pressed
against the drum.
When my father speaks
of childhood, sunlight
strikes a plowshare.
Across the cotton field
Muddy Waters’ bone-song
rings true when my father speaks
of Depression winters
& a wheel within a wheel.
My great-grandmama’s name
always turns up
like a twenty-dollar
gold piece.
Born a slave,
how old her hands were.
When my father speaks
of hanging trees
I know
all the old prophets
tied down in the electric chair.
My grandmamas—
Sunday night
Genesis to Revelations
testimonial hard line
neo-auction block
women. Kerosene
lamps & cherry-red
potbellied wood stoves
& chopping cotton
sunup to sundown
mule-plowing black-metal
blues women grow closer
each year like