I’ve seen men die before

at a Mississippi crossroads, Robert Johnson’s daughter gets her blues

Mama taught me there are rules to a man. One: don’t ever knock the bottle outta him, and two: if you meet one who smiles easy beware of the teeth. Remember a mouth is a glorified hand and he’ll want to root through yours like you ain’t got fingerprints. Like you ain’t woman enuf to leave a stain behind. You won’t see him swig down water. He ain’t made of it. She told me all a man got in him is poison, crawling. You smell his kind a delta away, try and keep him that far too. His final hour? S’underneath his tongue. Like a switchblade in a dress shoe. “Don’t’ dance with a man made of strychnine! All he got for you is music!” My daddy, Robert Johnson, he had music. And when he left, he was more than just the stain a woman leaves. My mama took down her house nail by nail after he left, after his suits got all itchy standing still in her closet like a headline in a sweaty fist. He left with our house. All we got left to live under is his name. Now I’m here, tryna make my own deal cuz I wanna be more than just a unwanted curl in a hairbrush. I wanna knock a bottle into me. Dare anyone to push me. Dare anyone to think my land is just a compliment to his boots. Knock me out and I’ll call my hell hounds. I’ll have someone to call alright. Someone with teeth.

the love unlimited orchestra

I am the only one who ever lived that remembers Barry White or murder.

I am the only one who ever lived that remembers sex.

I am the only one left.

The last of us is me and all I am good for is remembering.

A dusty record licks a needle with a long tongue.

I lick dust and remember Barry White.

Barry White and murder.

They are not the same but they are all I have left.

A crux of bodies, churning into sound.

Sex is this also, and that is all I can hold in my head.

How impossible an activity.

The small creak and push of a flimsy eyelash on a saucer.

How can Barry White come out of this?

It was before I knew about a touch, voiceless.

The end of love, a chord set to crack.

No fire, no sound.

Only the faint hope of body.

All I was to invent in this life is there in the case files.

My impossible: No dead man can sing.

Lick the dust.

Remember. The impossible: that two bodies

can be so close, they forget,

as long as forgetting allows.

My impossible: Barry White is dead.

No one will have sex again

because Barry White is dead.

Juicy (an erasure)

[Intro:]

All

grip.

Yeah.

All me.

Nothin’ lived above.

Buildings called on me.

Feed my all