Cover

Also by Phillip B. Williams

Thief in the Interior (2016)

Epigraph

It’s been a long time, I shouldn’t have left you

Without a strong rhyme to step to

—Eric B. & Rakim, “I Know You Got Soul”

I got a lot to be mad about

—Solange, “Mad”

Final First Poem

FINAL FIRST POEM

In the beginning, I suspect my index is on fire.

Daystart spasmodic with hunger, my dull teeth catch

on pale figures voweling from an empty heaven. God

been left, bored too with ransom for art, allusions

stacked like reluctant saints on a pyre: Eliot, Alighieri,

Homer. The sun’s glossy odyssey traces half-

moon above the horizon, clefts these alexandrine hours

into shoddy boats I’m tired of drifting toward nothing on.

“There was once a sea,” I begin, having never seen a sea

nor been able to seam any time to once. Now, I sleep

and avoid documenting my rhyme-sourced wet dreams,

and who would collect these metered christenings?

I want to know what you must know. I own nothing

impressive. No noctuaries of gallivanting steeds, no

beloveds creeping from sun-bloodied water in a salt-

stained stolen dress, no oceans from which she stole

her voice to give to me to offer you slow-blinkingly,

awaiting “genius” and a circle of rooks (all the crows

have gone, my love, and all shovels cradling yarrow and jewels

of beetles have rusted away, revealing my face all along

held these things in unrequited climax) to crown me king.

The book is burning. Come, sit at my bedside. Let ash

fill the fugue that was your need. Now, open your hands.

Reader, read to me what you have stolen and called your life.

Of the Question of Self and How It Never Quite Gets Answered

OF THE QUESTION OF SELF AND HOW IT NEVER QUITE GETS ANSWERED

In the poem, figure A is distilled to shadow and floor-looking.

Figure B musics crane-necked, anticipatory for the nih-nig.

I’ve always been a sucker for taxonomy.

The many ways I other without knowing.

I’m so Black I’m somebody’s pappy lowering

his eyes to an unmarked grave. Shamecracked. Akimbo in exclusive gaze.

Lawd, Lawd, Lawd—who is I talking to and where is I? One must

prepare to be seen at all times astounded into erasure, ill-imagined.

Some of us eat watermelon in the closet, breath fermenting

and vulpine. Blessèd, to eat without being eaten.

Safe in the umbra room, dancing ensues, uncaricatured O.

Figure B sniffs figure A. Figure A is hips and textile. Puppet-pulled.

History yawns from the Os of likely weapons, a sniper in the shade.

I know because in me the dark is alive, and the dark makes plans.

Final Poem for the White Students Next Door Who Say “Nigga” When Singing Along to Rap Songs Loud Enough for Me to Hear