I was trying to mimic the stain on a bed,

the sound of a woman’s soft, contracting bellow,

the answer to who I am. Before I trust the god

who makes me rot, I trust you, Piano.

Something deathless fills your wood. Because

I wanted to be invisible, I was trying to play

like a woman blacker than an unpaid light bill,

like a white boy lost in the snow. I wanted to be

a ghost because the skull is just a few holes

covered in meat. The skin has no teeth.

I was trying to play what I felt singing

in the mirror as a boy. I was trying to play

what I overheard: the old questions, the hunger,

the rattle of spines. The body that only loves

what it can touch always turns to dust.

What would a mother feel if her child sang

“Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child”

too beautifully? A hole has no teeth.

A bird has no teeth. But you got teeth, Piano.

You make me high. You make me dance

as only a sail can dance its ragged assailable dance.

You make me believe there is good in me.

My lady, she dreams I am better than I am.

I was trying to play “Mouhamadou Bamba”

like a band of Africans named after a tree.

A tree has no teeth. A horn has no teeth.

Don’t chew, Piano. Don’t chew, sing to me,

you fine-ass lounging harp. You fancy engine

doing other people’s work. I was trying to play

the sound of an empty house because

that’s how I get by when the darkness in my body

starts to bleed. I was trying to play “Autumn Leaves”

because that’s what my lady’s falling dress

sounds like to me. Before you, Piano, I was just a rap

of knuckles on a windowsill. I am filled with the sound

of my lover’s breathing and only you can bring it out of me.

ANTEBELLUM HOUSE PARTY

To make the servant in the corner unobjectionable

Furniture, we must first make her a bundle of tree parts

Axed and worked to confidence. Oak-jawed, birch-backed,

Cedar-skinned, a pillowy bosom for the boss infants,

A fine patterned cushion the boss can fall upon.

Furniture does not pine for a future wherein the boss

Plantation house will be ransacked by cavalries or calvary.

A kitchen table can, in the throes of a yellow fever outbreak,

Become a cooling board holding the boss wife’s body.

It can on ordinary days also be an ironing board holding

Boss garments in need of ironing. Tonight it is simply a

Place for a white cup of coffee, a tin of white cream. Boss calls

For sugar and the furniture bears it sweetly. Let us fill the mouth

Of the boss with something stored in the pantry of a house

War, decency, nor bedeviled storms can wipe from the past.

Furniture’s presence should be little more than a warm feeling

In the den. The dog staring into the fireplace imagines each log