Cover

Dedication

To the most beautiful

“To name ourselves rather than be named

we must first see ourselves …

So long unmirrored in our true selves

we may have forgotten how we look.”

— LORRAINE O’GRADY

I.

Blueprint

As I lay on the prickly grass, grasshoppers chattered

in my hair. I stroked the ground like a beard. No one

sang. The whole sky was watching. It’s animal

piss in the dye pot that makes indigo blue. Blue

seeped out of me, but I wanted to forge it myself.

I was obsessed with making. The yellow leaves

browned; the sugar pine needles refused

to shed. I couldn’t get the pigment right, it kept turning

to mud. I had attempted this before, making wine

from another’s body, stamping and stomping

my grape-stained feet. When I rose, I left the print

of a woman behind. I noticed the pear tree, how it gave

without question; I asked anyway, was asking

again, collecting broken seashells and tiny

elephant figurines. I needed a herd of blue.

I soaked black beans for the color they left. My blue

was a habit, a kind of river I stepped into—sometimes

crossed—because it held the sky so perfectly.

I swung the axe. I swam with my arms.

I hammered nails—though crookedly. Timber

was my sacrum, timber were my metatarsals,

timber was my lungs’ pink flesh, timber was my skull.

I was a blueprint, blue on blue, mapless

but for those warm bones and my red heart barking.

—And when I turned without making my skirt

a basket, when I turned from all the fallen

pears, the sky was full of shaking: wet

with river-water. It wasn’t rain that fell—whatever it was

I collected in the cups of my hands.

On Seeing and Being Seen

I don’t like being photographed. When we kissed

at a wedding, the night grew long and luminous.

You unhooked my bra. A photograph

passes for proof, Sontag says, that a given thing

has happened. Or you leaned back to watch

as I eased the straps from my shoulders.

Hooks and eyes. Right now, my breasts

are too tender to be touched. Their breasts

were horrifying, Elizabeth Bishop writes. Tell her

someone wanted to touch them. I am touching

the photograph of my last seduction. It is as slick

as a magazine page, as dark as a street

darkened by rain. When I want to remember

something beautiful, instead of taking

a photograph, I close my eyes.

I watched as you covered my nipple

with your mouth. Desire made you

beautiful. I closed my eyes.

Tonight, I am alone in my tenderness.

There is nothing in my hand except a certain

grasping. In my mind’s eye, I am

stroking your hair with damp fingertips. This is exactly

how it happened. On the lit-up hotel bed,

I remember thinking, My body is a lens

I can look through with my mind.

Two Girls Bathing

I’m thirteen when my cousin teaches me

how to bathe. We carry buckets

from Auntie’s kitchen, limping

to the pendulum of water swinging.

Undressed, we stand side by side

on the concrete fl or. Carol’s hands

don’t handle like my mother’s did:

propping me in the bathtub beside

my brothers, constructing an assembly line

of our limbs, as she lathered

and polished us clean. This was before

boys became unlike girls, before

our mother, whose flesh we ate,

whose nipples we cracked,

was exiled from us. Carol instructs me

wordlessly. In deliberate movements,

she rubs across her torso’s cross

and sweeps beneath each breast.

I mimic her gestures: tipping the bucket

slightly, so as not to dirty the water.

I watch how easily she bares

her supple body. She wears her nakedness

like it’s been woven from air.

Carol points to a spot on my back.

I resist the urge to hide my chest.

Tucked inside her is what hangs

from my brothers like pockets turned

inside out. I tilt my head like a mirror,

envy the gold beads hugging her waist,

and bring the washcloth to where I’ve missed:

not knowing when and from whom

I learned to be ashamed.

Marigolds of Fire

1.

He had a caribou’s face. Once he let me

lick the sadness there. It tasted of salt

and moss-covered rocks. He grew the beard

of a mountain goat. He scaled the face

of a mountain. Lying beside him, I stared

into the face of faceless waters whose velvet

antlers cradled us. He wore a bison’s

face. Sometimes he wallowed in the dust,

tossing his head from side to side,

wearing deep grooves into the braided

rug. Mornings, he refused to betray

his dreams. He had an antelope’s face—I could

go on like this. I liked how he led me, almost

a shove, how he kissed me—mercy—how I

kissed him back: my back against the foyer

wall. Sometimes we called to each other

like birds. It wasn’t ritual—how can I

explain—he laced his fingers, made his knees

a ladder. I braced myself on his backward horns.

I climbed him then, into the tree.

2.

In the end, we were delivered back

to the strange mud from which we crawled.

The bed gave us back, unastonished,

our aching, separate bodies.

This is skin, it told us. Skin, I wrote.

I would commit its meaning to memory.

3.

A football player slaps the butt

of a passing girl. She turns

to face a silvered hand dangling

from each player’s wrist: windless

chimes. Under their helmets,

the teammates wear the same blank face.

—Can I tell you I wanted them all?

4.

In the beginning, there was blood or the threat

of blood. Formed from clay, we sought a fire

that could finish us. We sewed a garland

of marigolds. We ate good blossoms whole.

5.

He takes his coff e with cream

and sugar; she takes it black.

She scans her wardrobe

for a dress. They respond to emails

and tidy their desks. At 4 am,

the garbage truck jostles her awake. He sleeps best

on his side, on his back,

on his belly. He calls her lady. Though before she’d wince

at this term of endearment, she hears the word babe

slip out of her.

It slips out of her mouth … His eyes

are tired. She has bags under her eyes. She waters

the cactus in a slip. The sky

turns stormy. He forgets the umbrella. She wants

to storm out. He believes she’ll leave. He forgets

to call. She calls him a name. She takes it

back … He takes it black, no

sugar. He’s confused. He wants a baby. She

winces. They rub their eyes. It was a slip. A mistake.

He packs his bags. She irons the sky-blue

dress. She can’t stand his silences. The way he slips

in and out of her. The phone was on silent.

The ringer was off. She removes the ring

from the tub … He sleeps

on the couch, on his side. The sky

is a bath of coff e grounds. Her face is full

of clouds. His eye waters. Somewhere

near a marsh there’s a starling roosting.

I’m saying the middle

was filled with the end.

Labor

Manhattan, New York

The Upper West Side brims

with Black women heaving Bugaboo

strollers as if maneuvering horseless plows.

I’m walking up Broadway with a white friend

whose mother’s food stamps we used

as kids to buy Sour Straws, barbecue

chips, and frosted pints of Cherry Garcia.

While we zigzag between pedestrians,

she argues that there may be as many

white, working-class nannies steering

double-wide strollers as Black.

It’s hard to tell, she insists,

whether the white women caring

for white babies are laborers

or mothers. I know we use

the same word to describe work

and the work of giving birth.

Still, I’m tempted to call her bluff.

Today, I do not want children.

I recall instances when I’ve been mistaken

for mother. Like last May, when a man

clutching a fistful of blush roses

wished me Happy Mother’s Day.

Or in a muggy subway car,

as the child beside me rested his head

on my arm. A nearby passenger’s eyes

softened at our portrait.

I claimed the sleeping child then,

briefly, I claimed him.

More than once, I’ve held tightly

the hands of my twin nephews,

who could be confused

for each other—or as mine.

Together, we’ve waited near

the chasm of the street—gust of cars

stealing their reflections. I’ve spent hours,

brief minutes, tending to children

I in no way labored for—and then,

with some relief, I have let them go.

Poem After Betye Saar’s The Liberation of Aunt Jemima

What if, Betye, instead of a rifle or hand

grenade—I mean, what if after

the loaded gun that takes two hands

to fire, I lay down the splintered broom

and the steel so cold it wets

my cheek? What if I unclench the valleys

of my fist, and lay down

the wailing baby?

Gonna burn the moon in a cast-iron skillet.

Gonna climb the men who, when they see my face, turn into stony mountains.

Gonna get out of the kitchen.

Gonna try on my nakedness like a silk kimono.

Gonna find me a lover who eats nothing but pussy.

Let the whites of my eyes roll, roll.

Gonna clench my toes.

Gonna purr beneath my own hand.

Gonna take down my hair.

Try on a crown of crow feathers.

Gonna roam the wide aisles of the peach grove, light dripping off ranches like syrup, leaves brushing the fuzz on my arms.

—You dig?—

Gonna let the juice trickle down my chin.

Gonna smear the sun like war paint across my chest.

Gonna shimmy into a pair of royal blue bell-bottoms.

Gonna trample the far-out thunderclouds, heavy in their lightness.

Watch them slink away.

Gonna grimace. Gonna grin.

Gonna lay down my sword.

Pick up the delicate eggs of my fists.

Gonna jab the face that hovered over mine.

It’s easy to find the lips, surrounded as they are in minstrel black.

Gonna bloody the head of every god, ghost, or swan who has torn into me—pried me open with its beak.

Gonna catch my breath in a hunting trap.

Gonna lean against the ropes.

Gonna break the nose of mythology.

—Goodnight John-Boy—

Gonna ice my hands in April’s stream.

Gonna scowl and scream and shepherd my hollering into a green pasture.

Gonna mend my annihilations into a white picket fence.

Gonna whip a tornado with my scarlet handkerchief.

Spin myself dizzy as a purple-lipped drunkard.

Gonna lay down, by the riverside, sticky and braless in the golden sand.

Ain’t gonna study war no more.

Ain’t gonna study war no more.

Ain’t gonna study war no more.

Diamondback

Like an organ coiled

deep inside or a lasso

of lightning and high

noon, the rattlesnake

traveled the length

of my spine, sunning itself

inside me. Then death—some

call it god—drew a diamond

on the snake’s back,

and marked my chest

with feeling. How godly

the two of us were, shaking

what was hollow.

Dirt stained

the front of my blouse.

I felt venom

rise in my ears. I rubbed myself

against a rock,

turning my skin bronze

and flawless. This is how

I became a woman,

sun slithering

across my back,

dust glittering my tongue,

the snake’s tail whirring.

After the __________, I yearned to be reckless. To smash

a glass brought first to my lips. To privilege lust over

tomorrow. To walk naked down the middle of a two-lane

road. But, too late, without my bidding, life cracked open,

rushed, openmouthed, like a panting dog whose name

I did not call—my lips shut like a purse. The last man

I kissed was different than the last man I fucked.

We were so desperate then, the two of us, undone

by longing, drawing night from the cracks

inside us, drawing the night out, as long as we could,

until dawn broke like a beat egg and our heartbeats

quieted in private fatigue. I’d be lying if I said I don’t recall

his name. The end of the world has ended, and desire is still

all I crave. Oh, to be a stone, sexless and impenetrable.

Over half of me is water, a river spilling into restless limbs,

the rest of me is a scalding heat like the asphalt under my feet.

Detail from “Poem After Betye Saar’s The Liberation of Aunt Jemima”

And out of her gushing head, I witnessed

four fully-grown women spring forth

like winged beasts: the first woman

wore the charm of her unmasked hair

and a taken-for-granted beauty that made

her all the more enticing; the last woman

modeled an anonymous version of herself—

an “I” that didn’t remind anyone

of anyone else, but who reminded Aunt Jemima

of freedom; the second woman brandished

a handheld mirror she spat on

then polished with the ruffled hem

of her apron, a mirror all the women,

except the last, gathered around

like campfire; and the second to last

woman carried a pink mulatto, squirming

on her hip—in the baby’s hand a rattle,

in the rattle a shattered lightbulb,

in the filament, a portrait

of the child’s father, who some say

Aunt Jemima tempted with her bottle-shaped

hips, but who was known to be monstrous—

a so-called god—and I beheld a sea

of blood, dark as syrup, oozing

from Aunt Jemima’s neck,

and four women flying, without shoes

or wings, from her maternal, amber body.

Primordial Mirror

I was newly naked: aware of myself

as a separate self, distinct from dirt and bone.

I had not hands enough,

and so, finally, uncrossed my arms.

In trying to examine one body part,

I’d lose sight of another. I couldn’t

imagine what I looked like during

the fractured angles of sex.

At the river’s edge, it was impossible

to see all of myself at once.

I began to understand nakedness

as a feeling.

It was a snake, loose and green;

it was the snake skin, coiled and discarded.

The shedding chained itself

like a balloon ribboned to a child’s wrist.

Morning’s birdsong reminded me

of the sloughing off f skin.

The rumored beauty of my husband’s first

wife never bothered me before.

I missed the sensation of being fixed

in amber. Then the hair in the comb,

fingernail clippings, the red mole on my

left breast grown suddenly bigger.

I perceived my likeness in everything:

the lines on my palm as the veins

of a leaf, my mind as a swarm of flies

humming over something sugary or dead,

my vulnerability as the buck

I’d kill, then wrap myself inside,

my hair as switchgrass, twine, and nest,

a roving cloud my every limb.

Le Sacre du printemps

after Pina Bausch

At this time of night, the theater is empty:

draped in its velvet robes, echoing with ghosts

and applause. I’ve been tossing and turning

all night, as headlights flash across the ceiling.

Inside the ornate opera house, it felt close to midnight—

bottomless, like tonight—though it was the middle

of the day when I arrived and the usher

escorted me to my seat. An ocean of dirt

covered the stage. The dancers performed

underneath and on top of Stravinsky’s score.

With their bodies, they made another music:

full of lunges, panting, slaps, stomps,

and whatever sounds the body makes

when it yields to unyielding earth.

Men and women threw themselves on the fl or

and into each other: smearing their skins

with dirt, violence, and sweat.

I am restless. Tonight, I remember

I vowed to feel as alive as the woman

who, in a rite of spring, must dance herself

to death. Hair frazzled, clothes soiled, the fated

woman fell to the earth then sprang back up,

slashing the air and contracting her body as if

she’d been punched repeatedly. She fell

and danced, danced and fell, until she collapsed

for the last time. —The stage went black.

How quickly I walked into the bright day,

leaving her there, behind me. On nights

like this one, when I’m crazed by wakefulness,

and darkness sacrifices itself, anxious limb

by anxious limb, into the day’s endless mouth,

I steal the red dress from the dead woman’s body

and dance wildly, with such abandon,

the room turns stained, swirling, terrible, pink.

After the __________, I had the urge to dance

on the president’s grave. The dispossessed threw me

a belated quinceañera. My godmother wore a necklace

of the dictator’s teeth. She sliced an upside-down cake, licked

her forefinger, and said, You have mastered sadness, querida,

may your rage be sticky and sweet. My father off red

his hand—this time I took it. We glided like

ballroom dancers across the red dirt fl or. He wore

a grave expression. I embraced him tightly

so as to cloak my face. Instead of a toast, he handed me

a handkerchief wet with tears. My father circled

the guests silently, dabbing gently each of their cheeks.

This too was a dance unfolding. I folded the handkerchief

into a fist and raised my fist like a glass of champagne.

The pain in my father’s eyes sparkled like the sequins

on my tattered gown. If it hadn’t been so ugly,

it would’ve been beautiful. The party ended just as

the world had: with the sound of rain beating

against the earth and each of us on our hands

and knees, peering into pools of mud and thirst.

II.

She Said

Hello

Can you hear me

Can you hear me now

Hello

I can’t hear you

I’m sorry you’re breaking up

Is this better

Can you hear me now

Hello

Hello

Can you hear me now

Hello

*

And the said Agostino retorted that … [hole in page] and that he should find it, that otherwise he would have … [hole in page] for this ugly … [holes in page]

[[20. How long after it happened [did you tell]? Why didn’t you tell it immediately, and, if immediately, why didn’t you bring suit? Why have you said it now and what induced you to say it?]]

To the twentieth, she said

To the twenty-first, she said

To the twenty-second, she said

To the tenth one she answered as above

To the twelfth, she referred to the next one

And to the first [question] she answered

And while they were writing this down

To the third one she answered

To the thirteenth, she answered

To the eighth one she said

And the said summoned woman answered

*

FOOTNOTE 58: Hole in the page, one or two words missing.

FOOTNOTE 51: Hole in the page; three words missing.

I’m sorry you’re breaking—

She was asked

She answered

FOOTNOTE 68: The page is torn; two or three words are missing at the beginning of the line, and a line or more is cut off at the bottom of the page.

The said summoned woman retorting

Can you—

FOOTNOTE 63: See ms. 10.

*

And while the guard tightened the said cords with a running string, the said woman began to say

Then the judge, having heard [all this], etc., terminated the interrogation and ordered that the witness be sent back to her house for the time being.

*

When considering this poem, I know the “I” is missing. Twelve years ago, on one occasion, [ ] was robbed, assaulted, and almost raped by the same man, a stranger.

*

Is this better

Footnote 26: Literally, “lying in his throat” (mentirà per la gola).

How about now

The connection is bad

Sorry

Hold on

Hold on

Literally, “lying in his throat”

How about now

How

repeating the above words over and over, and then saying,

o

sorry

breaking

Hell

o

sorry

about

no

now

o

Hell

He

better

hear

breaking

break

better

be

breaking

this

can’t

me

*

the hear in hearing the ear the he the he in she the sh in shame the me the shh in me the ssshhhhh the y in saying the why the say the said the sad the sad i the scared i terrified she tried to say the test in testify the be in believed the lie the lived the silent i the why in silence the shh in she the she before the space before the space between she and said the ears in years the saying the said between

*

She added afterward voluntarily

She answered

She added afterward voluntarily

She added afterward

She added afterward voluntarily

She answered

She answered

She added afterward voluntarily

*

“At this point, I will do my best to answer your questions.”

*

FOOTNOTE 70: Page is torn; a final line not legible.

III.

“It’s essential that I do this workand it’s essential that I do it with my body.”

—CARRIE MAE WEEMS

Posing Nude

after Living Room, Brownsville, Brooklynby Deana Lawson

If I were to choose a man to pose nude

with, it would be the ex whose hand

in mine, I couldn’t distinguish

from my own—just as, studying

this photograph, it’s hard to tell

the male’s fingers, pressed

into a triangle, from the female’s,

decorated by acrylic nails so long

they curve like a penis might.

This particular ex anticipated

my needs like a photographer considers

sources of light. He’d wrap me in a blanket

before opening the window

to smoke a cigarette. We gazed at each other

from a certain distance.

In choosing him, I choose

the feeling of waiting naked

beneath the throw, wanting nothing

but the last dashed ember—and next

his mouth sucking

my earlobes and neck.

In Living Room, a male figure bares

a tattooed chest, cuff d jeans,

and Timberlands. Behind him, a woman

sits, propped on the radiator. Leaning back,

he rests on her right breast.

The couple stares at the camera.

I know the composition is staged—

down to the cast-off hoes, askew

on the fl or. A photograph tells truths

and lies. The couple pictured are not

lovers. Lawson asked the female subject

who she’d feel most comfortable

posing nude with: she chose a friend.

Years ago, my ex sent me nude photos.

At the time, he was living

with the woman he would later

marry. His face remains just

outside the frame. The subject

of the email read, “For Your Eyes Only.”

In the only photograph of us I’ve kept,

I’m wearing a necklace. The clasp

will soon break. Tenderness closes

my eyes into lines. He stares at me

instead of the camera; his face breaks

into laughter. That night in bed,

after the picture was taken, a mosquito

worried past his ear. My mouth rested

on his chest. He woke bitten and swollen.

Burying Seeds

for Betty Shabazz

Who, when they killed her husband, was carrying

twin girls—not in her arms, but in an armless

sea, with bits of blood as food. She covered

her daughters in the waters of her body.

She covered her daughters in the rooms

her body built, pressed against the wooden

fl or of the Audubon Ballroom. She must have

cried, as my mother did, when she stuttered, Twins?

into the paper gown of the hospital room.

The body longs for its double. Even twins

stretch long their arms toward other strangers.

The first time I visited a mosque, I was surprised

to be separated from my father and brothers.

I sat, with the women and girls, alone.

From across the aisle, I stared at the men

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