Neon Vernacular. Yusef Komunyakaa
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dress
Worn thin by a hundred washings.
Like colors & strength
Boiled out of cloth,
Some deep & tall scent
Made the daylilies cower.
Where did the wordless
Moans come from in twilit
Rooms between hunger
& panic? Those years
We fought aside each other’s hands.
Sap pulled a song
From the red-throated robin,
Drove bloodhounds mad
At the edge of a cornfield,
Split the bud down to hot colors.
I began reading you Yeats
& Dunbar, hoping for a potion
To draw the worm out of the heart.
Naked, unable or afraid,
We pulled each other back
Into our clothes.
7 Immigrants
Lured by the cobalt
Stare of blast furnaces,
They talked to the dead
& unborn. Their demons
& gods came with black rhinoceros powder
In ivory boxes with secret
Latches that opened only
Behind unlit dreams.
They came as Guissipie, Misako,
& Goldberg, their muscles tuned
To the rhythm of meathooks & washboards.
Some wore raw silk,
A vertigo of color
Under sombrous coats,
& carried weatherbeaten toys.
They touched their hair
& grinned into locked faces
Of nightriders at the A & P.
Some darker than us, we taught them
About Colored water fountains & toilets
Before they traded sisters
& daughters for weak smiles
At the fish market & icehouse.
Gypsies among pines at nightfall
With guitars & cheap wine,
Sunsets orange as Django’s
Cellophane bouquets. War
Brides spoke a few words of English,
The soil of distant lands
Still under their fingernails.
Ashes within urns. The Japanese plum
Fruitless in our moonlight.
Footprints & nightmares covered
With snow, we were way stations
Between sweatshops & heaven.
Worry beads. Talismans.
Passacaglia. Some followed
Railroads into our green clouds,
Searching for friends & sleepwalkers,
But stayed till we were them
& they were us, grafted in soil
Older than Jamestown & Osceola.
They lived in back rooms
Of stores in The Hollow,
Separated by alleyways
Leading to our back doors,
The air tasting of garlic.
Mister Cheng pointed to a mojo
High John the Conqueror & said
Ginseng. Sometimes zoot-suited
Apparitions left us talking
Pidgin Tagalog & Spanish.
We showed them fishing holes
& guitar licks. Wax pompadours
Bristled like rooster combs,
But we couldn’t stop loving them
Even after they sold us
Rotting fruit & meat,
With fingers pressed down
On the scales. We weren’t
Afraid of the cantor’s snow wolf
Shadowplayed along the wall
Embedded in shards of glass.
Some came numbered. Geyn
Tzum schvartzn yor. Echoes
Drifted up the Mississippi,
Linking us to Sacco, Vanzetti,
& Leo Frank. Sometimes they stole
Our Leadbelly & Bessie Smith,
& headed for L.A. & The Bronx,
As we watched poppies bloom
Out of season, from a needle
& a hundred sanguine threads.
8 A Trailer at the Edge of a Forest
A throng of boys whispered
About the man & his daughters,
How he’d take your five dollars
At the door. With a bull terrier
At his feet, he’d look on. Fifteen
& sixteen, Beatrice & Lysistrata
Were medicinal. Mirrors on the ceiling.
Posters of a black Jesus on a cross. Owls
& ravens could make a boy run out of his shoes.
Country & Western filtered through wisteria.
But I only found dead grass & tire tracks,
As if a monolith had stood there
A lifetime. They said the girls left quick
As katydids flickering against windowpanes.
9 White Port & Lemon Juice
At fifteen I’d buy bottles
& hide them inside a drainpipe
Behind the school
Before Friday-night football.
Nothing was as much fun
As shouldering a guard
To the ground on the snap,
& we could only be destroyed
By another boy’s speed
On the twenty-yard line.
Up the middle on two, Joe.
Eddie Earl, you hit that damn
Right tackle, & don’t let those
Cheerleaders take your eyes off
The ball. We knew the plays
But little about biology
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