Neon Vernacular. Yusef Komunyakaa
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me to Django’s gypsy guitar
& Dunbar’s “broken tongue,” beyond
god-headed jive of the apocalypse,
& back to the old sorrow songs
where boisterous flowers still nod on their
half-broken stems. The deep rosewood
of the piano says, “Holler
if it feels good.” Perfect tension.
The mainspring of notes & extended
possibility—what falls on either side
of a word—the beat between & underneath.
Organic, cellular space. Each riff & word
a part of the whole. A groove. New changes
created. “In the Land of Obladee”
burns out the bell with flatted fifths,
a matrix of blood & language
improvised on a bebop heart
that could stop any moment
on a dime, before going back
to Hughes at the Five Spot.
Twelve bars. Coltrane leafs through
the voluminous air for some note
to save us from ourselves.
The limbo & bridge of a solo …
trying to get beyond the tragedy
of always knowing what the right hand
will do … ready to let life play me
like Candido’s drum.
Work
I won’t look at her.
My body’s been one
Solid motion from sunrise,
Leaning into the lawnmower’s
Roar through pine needles
& crabgrass. Tiger-colored
Bumblebees nudge pale blossoms
Till they sway like silent bells
Calling. But I won’t look.
Her husband’s outside Oxford,
Mississippi, bidding on miles
Of timber. I wonder if he’s buying
Faulkner’s ghost, if he might run
Into Colonel Sartoris
Along some dusty road.
Their teenage daughter & son sped off
An hour ago in a red Corvette
For the tennis courts,
& the cook, Roberta,
Only works a half day
Saturdays. This antebellum house
Looms behind oak & pine
Like a secret, as quail
Flash through branches.
I won’t look at her. Nude
On a hammock among elephant ears
& ferns, a pitcher of lemonade
Sweating like our skin.
Afternoon burns on the pool
Till everything’s blue,
Till I hear Johnny Mathis
Beside her like a whisper.
I work all the quick hooks
Of light, the same unbroken
Rhythm my father taught me
Years ago: Always give
A man a good day’s labor.
I won’t look. The engine
Pulls me like a dare.
Scent of honeysuckle
Sings black sap through mystery,
Taboo, law, creed, what kills
A fire that is its own heart
Burning open the mouth.
But I won’t look
At the insinuation of buds
Tipped with cinnabar.
I’m here, as if I never left,
Stopped in this garden,
Drawn to some Lotus-eater. Pollen
Explodes, but I only smell
Gasoline & oil on my hands,
& can’t say why there’s this bed
Of crushed narcissus
As if gods wrestled here.
Praising Dark Places
If an old board laid out in a field
Or backyard for a week,
I’d lift it up with a finger,
A tip of a stick.
Once I found a scorpion
Crimson as a hibernating crawfish
As if a rainbow edged underneath;
Centipedes & unnameable
Insects sank into loam
With a flutter. My first lesson:
Beauty can bite. I wanted
To touch scarlet pincers—
Warriors that never zapped
Their own kind, crowded into
A city cut off from the penalty
Of sunlight. The whole rotting
Determinism just an inch beneath
The soil. Into the darkness
Of opposites, like those racial
Fears of the night, I am drawn again,
To conception & birth. Roots of ivy
& farkleberry can hold a board down
To the ground. In this cellular dirt
& calligraphy of excrement,
Light is a god-headed
Law & weapon.
A Good Memory
1 Wild Fruit
I came to a bounty of black lustre
One July afternoon, & didn’t
Call my brothers. A silence
Coaxed me up into oak branches
Woodpeckers had weakened.
But they held there, braced
By a hundred years of vines
Strong & thick
Enough to hang a man.
The pulpy, sweet musk
Exploded in my mouth
As each indigo skin collapsed.
Muscadines hung in clusters,
& I forgot about jellybeans,
Honeycomb, & chocolate kisses.
I could almost walk on air
The first time