2.

You convenient contrivance the figs feed

their vibrant organs to, storms

in their roiling black opera munition you

with brieflight streaking their silhouettes, enough

brilliance to distinguish your foes in the parallax

of trees, phone poles, and a child

waiting near his tombhome for the poet

to stop killing him in the name of protest. In the name

of Palestine, of Syria, of—too many bombs dropped

without the country that dropped them being named.

It’s real how the poet rushes us into calamity. The poet

will not stop rhyming missile with exile, will always

find another carcass and corncob crib full of limbs

for you to deliver like a gangster. A mother dyes

her dress red and screams blood, screams I am already

dead to repel your calamus pelting the window.

Hexbird hoodlum, wokeface minstrel, you know

who built the wall but only caw at the doll

caught in the barbed wire’s reaping. May we feast

on you as you pace our eyes, foot in our mouths, a choir

of greedy tenors with no way to escape.

Final Poem for the “Black Body”

FINAL POEM FOR THE “BLACK BODY”

“[N]o names—the lists of slaves in the book were simply identified as ‘Negro man’ or ‘Negro woman’ at the top of the ledger and the account book followed by ‘ditto’ all down the page.”

—M. NourbeSe Philip

January 1, 2018

JANUARY 1, 2018

On Fortune.com, an article about slavery

in Libya prefaced by a Dove commercial:

“I don’t want there to be white marks,”

a potential buyer says, inspecting a shirt

while a lively tune plays in the background.

The ad is for an invisible dry spray. I laugh

without meaning to as dozens of migrants’

faces interrupt the once-white screen.

Soap-white words annotate the visual: “sold

in slave markets”—but I am still

thinking of antiperspirants, about the possible

scent of an unseeable product. I am still

laughing. I remain in laughter.

It is my latest state of being, of matter.

Final Poem as Tidalectic Elegy