I see her, one foot poised in a Sunday best heel, the other curdled in a slipper sock.

A gold ring decks each finger. I can only focus on extremities. The man is just a man, layered in sweaters and a practiced slouch. They could be talking to each other. They are close enough. They are staring at their feet, the beginning of a strained two-step.

Maybe.

But nah. Not tonight. There is a chill from another winter and I cannot name the soca tune playing, I only know I’m supposed to know it. The way I know a dance that refuses a body is fear sucking dry some muscle. Past Utica is Ralph, then Rockaway, then I walk past the couple that isn’t a couple, past a thought about the end of a line, an extremity gone ghost. I hear that soca tune, then watch it drive off into Lewis Ave and I turn right, shake off possibility, stop trying to remember the title, where I heard it first, when I was close enough.

But not tonight.

Down Lewis, a man hollers at me, “aye yo! yo ma! I’m so attracted to you- can I please take you to the steak house?” The man is just a man and I know I’m supposed to know it. That we will not talk to each other, but yell at possibility. That we’ll get mad at what we have to grow out of, at what hits stop.

The Gettysburg Address (an erasure)

This all

Might live.

But we?

Can not

Can not

Can not.

no country

1.

Is there a word for:

Just-a-brown-thing

no-sound-no-home

mother-loud-name

call-it-a-family-call

me-a-joke-daddy-can’t

open-him-mouth-without

a-lie-searching-for—

Just one?

Grip my hand on a phantom home,

all I do is ride out.

2.

Hand it over!

The Vegas you know

is bitched to dust

and all your women squeal

in my fist. Call me some other name.

A Chief, a Solider, a Brown Mockery

of Your Dead God.

My demands are few.

3.

Engineer a neon hate for me.

Crash it quick and call a SWAT Team

from 1976. I want to be so bad

they name a gun after me.

Rattlesnake and Tired Whore,

a dangerous respect I will dole out

for they have known my skin

and that is the lowest me.

Stuff every black baby in a djembe.

Watch them beat a way out.

I decree this racket a clock tower

and every cell phone’s ring tone

in my province, for it is more than me.

Birds of paradise from my ma’s wedding

bouquet will flock my desert. My kin.

Dear fools,

you don’t know me.

4.

Slice your eyes shut.

Yours truly,

Officer of the Armageddon,

Black Columbus of the First World,

chokes the curve out of her horse’s back,

her tears unmaking Nevada proper.

Sing about Me, I’m Dying of Thirst (an erasure)

(Sing about me)

[Intro]

[Verse 1]

I’m

not

here

I can

borrow

my mind

I find nothing

is what

we consider

A bullet