Neon Vernacular. Yusef Komunyakaa
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She
Still uppity & half
Trying to be white?
The man went off to war
& got one of his legs
Shot off & she wanted
To divorce him for that.
Crazy as a bessy bug.
Jack wasn’t cold
In his grave before
She done up & gave all
The insurance money
To some young pigeon
Who never hit a lick
At work in his life.
He cleaned her out & left
With Donna Faye’s girl.
Honey, hush. You don’t
Say. Her sister,
Charlene, was silly
Too. Jump into bed
With anything that wore
Pants. White, black,
Chinese, crazy, or old.
Some woman in Chicago
hooked a blade into her.
Remember? Now don’t say
You done forgot Charlene.
Her face a little blurred
But she coming back now.
Loud & clear. With those
Real big, sad, gray eyes.
A natural-born hellraiser,
& loose as persimmon pie.
You said it, honey.
Miss High Yellow.
I heard she’s the reason
Frank shot down Otis Lee
Like a dog in The Blue
Moon. She was a blood-
Sucker. I hate to say this,
But she had Arthur
On a short leash too.
Your Arthur, Mary.
She was only a girl
When Arthur closed his eyes.
Thirteen at the most.
She was doing what women do
Even then. I saw them
With my own two eyes,
& promised God Almighty
I wouldn’t mention it.
But it don’t hurt
To mention it now, not
After all these years.
Right column
Heat lightning jumpstarts the slow
afternoon & a syncopated rainfall
peppers the tinroof like Philly Joe
Jones’ brushes reaching for a dusky
backbeat across the high hat. Rhythm
like cells multiplying … language &
notes made flesh. Accents & stresses,
almost sexual. Pleasure’s knot; to wrestle
the mind down to unrelenting white space,
to fill each room with spring’s contagious
changes. Words & music. “Ruby, My Dear”
turned down on the cassette player,
pulsates underneath rustic voices
waltzing out the kitchen—my grandmama
& an old friend of hers from childhood
talking B-flat blues. Time & space,
painful notes, the whole thing wrung
out of silence. Changes. Caesuras.
Nina Simone’s downhome cry echoes
theirs—Mister Backlash, Mister Backlash—
as a southern breeze herds wild, blood-
red roses along the barbed-wire fence.
There’s something in this house, maybe
those two voices & Satchmo’s gold horn,
refracting time & making the Harlem
Renaissance live inside my head.
I can hear Hughes like a river
of fingers over Willie “The Lion” Smith’s
piano, & some naked spiritual releases
a shadow in a reverie of robes & crosses.
Oriflamme & Judgment Day … undulant waves
bring in cries from Sharpeville & Soweto,
dragging up moans from shark-infested
seas as a blood moon rises. A shock
of sunlight breaks the mood & I hear
my father’s voice growing young again,
as he says, “The devil’s beating
his wife”: One side of the road’s rainy
& the other side’s sunny. Imagination—
driftwood from a spring flood, stockpiled
by Furies. Changes. Pinetop’s boogiewoogie
keys stack against each other like syllables
in tongue-tripped elegies for Lady Day
& Duke. Don’t try to make any sense
out of this; just let it take you
like Pres’s tenor & keep you human.
Voices of school girls rush & surge
through the windows, returning
with the late March wind; the same need
pushing my pen across the page.
Their dresses lyrical against the day’s
sharp edges. Dark harmonies. Bright
as lamentations behind a spasm band
from New Orleans. A throng of boys
are throwing at a bloodhound barking
near a blaze of witch hazel at the corner
of the fence. Mister Backlash.
I close my eyes & feel castanetted
fingers on the spine, slow as Monk’s
“Mysterioso”; a man can hurt for years
before words flow into a pattern
so woman-smooth, soft as a pine-scented
breeze off the river Lethe. Satori-blue
changes. Syntax. Each naked string
tied to eternity—the backbone
strung like a bass. Magnolia
blossoms fall in the thick tremble
of Mingus’s “Love Chant”; extended bars
natural as birds in trees & on powerlines
singing between the cuts—Yardbird
in