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

FINAL POEM FOR THE WHITE STUDENTS NEXT DOOR WHO SAY “NIGGA” WHEN SINGING ALONG TO RAP SONGS LOUD ENOUGH FOR ME TO HEAR

I caught you stealing

glances of yourselves in the shrieking

mirrors of your smiles, and still

you have not found yourselves

in this self-made history bright

as a premonition. You’ve been

looking for your mothers

with your voices and found your names

in the pulse of Lil Wayne. I knew

already what to call you was what

you thought to call me. Please

return the e and r. You must

return to what birthed you. The nothing

rhythmlessly stomps

boot-wise over the head

of my darky sleeplessness. Last night

a young Black student screamed,

“I’m Black! I’ll fuck a mother-

fucker up,” trying to convince.

Nowadays, it’s difficult niggering

to one’s self. Just yesterday, I misplaced

my bottle of melatonin but said

to a friend on the phone, “I lost my melanin.”

Sleepless and white, I fissured

my imagination to find in it

some semblance of you concussing

a book of speeches by MLK and chanting

“peace” in no specific direction. Responding

to my loss of melanin, my friend

screamed, “My nigga!” but I swore

he’d thrown his voice. Outside,

you cuss loudly, are angry about the beer.

Everyone needs to hear this. I raise

my blinds. I stare through the window

but can see myself as palimpsest over you all

as you stare back, approximate, catching on.

Final Poem as Request for Maskot for White-Ran Journal, or “They Sure Do Love Them Some Black Pain.”

FINAL POEM AS REQUEST FOR MASKOT FOR WHITE-RAN JOURNAL, OR “THEY SURE DO LOVE THEM SOME BLACK PAIN.”

Tell us duh one bout dem chirren and duh bullets dey eat

Tell us duh one bout dem roaches makin love to yo feet

Tell us duh one bout yo grandmammy’s hands:

callused and cookin, cansuh everywhere but her hands

Tell us bout her mouf too: “Oh Lawdy Jesus,” “Wrench around . . . ,”

“Bout scared me half to DEATH” she make purty sounds

Tell us duh one bout white people cuttin you

in line [did yuh neck do that back

and forf thing finguh waggin

lips lippin “nuh uh no she di-int”]

Tell us duh one bout duh woman duh rope and duh bridge

[O dere was a baby dat fell out and bumped its head

on duh wata followin duh drinkin gourd

or nah?]

Is you submittin to my journal or nah?

You spoken word or nah?

You hopin whitey gets his just due

flippin duh bird or nah?

All da boys in duh hinterland killed

cause uh duh hoodie monster

You gots anymo uh dem po-lice poems wit duh

Hippity Hop refrences wit dem thugs and da trees?

I sho love me some Hippity Hop refrences

But why thugs always smokin on dem trees

Don’t dey know dey histry is

to run from burnin trees?

Duh way you write nigga makes me thank [of] my mama

Tell us duh one bout music comin from duh eyes

Was dat “Purple Rain” or “Duh Coluh Purple” or is it a suhprise?

Tell us “stolen milk,” “watch my chirren when I’m gone,”

“Don’t let him see me dis way,” “I’m so glad Jesus is my home!”

Got anymo uh dem poems bout Celie?

Got some “Give us us free”

in yo packet, yo pote-folio, or yo spahklin CV?

How much fo duh WIC-EBT-lost-bus-card sonnet?

How much fo slave wenches wearin wata-melons as bonnets?

What you got up in dat verse what you got up in dat verse

[a couple uh guns / a couple uh blunts / a couple uh suicide

doors / Dior chokers / all duh shit you adore?]

Dat one gets me so hard/wet at night in duh dahk

Duh dahk got a poem too soundin jus like a knife

slidin through some cone-bread

Soft as a baby

Tell us duh one again bout duh baby

Order of Events

ORDER OF EVENTS

First, he taught us to use the dead as shawls

in the viscous winter escorting his arrival.

Next, he taught us to forget the dead

were dead, our dead, and dead because of a wager

we did not consent him to make with the thin-lipped

savior of his own pantomime. Third, he delivered

on promises that blew off the tops of homes

in places whose names he could not pronounce.

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown

forced to fit a quiet country needing nothing

from a crown. Where once was honey unhived

competition. The drones meant for war

prepared for war. We dusted our shoulders

of Shadows’ silent reconnaissance, surveilled

as practice for a massacre we did not consent to.

The royal parade pride’s malady stomped

its sequence through beat drums of human skin

from which emanated a rhythm impossible

to decipher. I too would shake my ass

to the sound of stars falling night-

wise into a pit of myth-bent nomenclature

if the names sounded like home. Under eroding

circumstances, this kingdom could become home.

Under eroding circumstances, my gasp

has become home enough, love not

consented to yet detected from beneath

my mindless right hand pressing its devotion

to ritual over my heart, flag above waving heaven

and blood into the smoke-diffused sky I

quake my way through anthems beneath. Rockets

glaring off my breath forced to evidence I belong.

The crown is crooked. We straighten it

with vote-vapid hands. The crown sits too heavy

for the king to carry on his own. When it falls,

“O say can you see” strikes its inquisition.

My knees, summoned to straighten at the hinges

permission most questionably opens from,

spike the earth with a kiss. Could I

kneel my way to revolution?

Would that goad the king to unzip?

Final Poem for a King

FINAL POEM FOR A KING

I used to be friends with a man who raped a woman

whom he told was too dark for anyone to believe

though he himself was no lighter than the blackhole

he had become which means he did not believe

himself thus hated himself and will hate beyond himself

though he did not know it at the time that to rape

a Black woman was to hate the world and to be dead

to want to be dead to need to be dead because to be

born from one’s unfounded hatred is to be wholly

and forever zero to the white meat and she

the woman who shared her story had been for years

holding on to his violence his hatred toward her

handed off like a clue as in “What do you know

of yourself?” as in “My hatred birthed me, now so will you.”

I often think of that woman, whose name

was left unshared and I wouldn’t share it

even if I knew it—nor will I share his name for the law

he claims to hate for its whiteness has protected

his black revulsion, his silence an empire’s

gift to its willing slave—and I wonder how much

room there is in the world for her and how much

room have others taken from her and how her story

did not stop those who heard it from, months later,

sitting in a room with her rapist, smiling, allowing,

and how the rooms of their hearts had no space

for her either, though hadn’t she taken a step past

their thresholds, been invited in, not knowing

she had entered through the back door like a secret?

In undergrad, an acquaintance I had grown to love

told me her father had used the times of her mother’s

absence to—

I don’t know why she trusted me

to tell me this so casually in a burger joint.

And I remember wanting her to cry

because I wanted to cry but could not cry

and why could I not cry and how else do I

show her that I hear I care I believe her and she

thanked me for listening while I sat petrified

in half-smile like a delinquent who committed

a crime and almost got away thinking more

of myself than of her as is the way of men

who want most to be the unasked-for

white knight in an already-fought war.

His childhood friend, a teenage girl

when he was six. Their older cousin, fifteen,

and they were eight. His babysitter, her saying,

“Keep this between us.” Their aunt’s best friend

while the aunt ran an errand: “Girl, of course

I’ll watch him. He my lil husband.” His neighbor

who put his hand between his legs.

His teacher whom he impregnated at fifteen.

A woman his father paid and watched as they did it—

Adults in my life have come to me as the children

they were when touched too soon and asked me

if they did something wrong. I say “no” and “therapy”

and “You didn’t deserve . . .” They ask me if I’d ever

been touched too soon. I say, “I don’t remember.”

No woman in my family will tell me

what happened and I can’t tell them

I already know had been in the other

room sometimes when it happened

heard the slaps come down heard stop

ring out from my ______ heard the names

heard the threats heard the quiet after

heard about the boy who pushed

my ______ off the bus about the partner

who cut my _______ across the eye the one

neighbor carefully walking up the stairs

and my _______ running to the front door

to lock it only to have to run to lock the back

door too and the knob jiggling, jiggling, ji—

If I could kill them all, God: know I would.

I’m no saint. I too have wielded a knife

to execute someone I love more than myself

because a child’s rage is mercurial.

I could remember that feeling, that gilded heat.

If I could kill them all, God. Know I would

take my time. Would make a game of it. Often,

I sit daydreaming of hunting down rapists

in abandoned factories. Call me Jigsaw. I’ll nod

my wooden head, a yes they never saw coming.

If I could kill them all, God, know I would.

Just call them all Isaac and I’ll make them my sons.

If I could kill them all, God. Know I wouldn’t

even wash my hands after. Wouldn’t need permission.

When I was younger, I had a recurring dream

of an elderly man in a wheelchair tickling me

until it was not fun anymore. The dream stopped

some years into adolescence. I read somewhere

that repression leaves unlocked doors in the mind

you think are locked or merely empty rooms. Signs

that these rooms exist may never appear. I hear

nothing when I close my eyes, alone with myself,

and see the entrance into me expectantly open,

empty halls in memories where doors are blown

off hinges, rooms evacuated, torn white fabric draping

from the walls. There’s a condemned house in me.

I look for him in every sun-filled room,

but every beam of light and room is him.

And Now Upon My Head the Crown

AND NOW UPON MY HEAD THE CROWN

In the first place—I wanted him and said so

when I had only meant to say. His eyes

opened beyond open as if such force would unlock me

to the other side where daylight gave reason

for him to re-dress.

When he put on his shirt,

after I asked him to keep it off, to keep putting off

the night’s usual end, his face changed beneath

the shirt: surprise to grin, to how even the body

of another’s desire can be a cloak behind which

to change one’s power, to find it.

~

In the first place

he slept, he opened the tight heat of me that had been

the only haven he thought to give a name:

Is-it-mine? Why-you-running? Don’t-run-from-it—as though

through questions doubt would find its way away from me,

as though telling me what to do told me who I was.

Tabula Rasa

TABULA RASA

On the bus, a man sees me wearing a T-shirt of names

of the dead. It is his seeing my T-shirt that makes the day

glow and the inquiry in his seeing that makes it turn

cold and pause us so that between us

he builds a morgue with his gaze, and in that morgue

interpretation fashions itself from black cotton

and white letters, from impatience and mercy.

He rises to move toward me. The bus rocks

down avenues lined with playing children and liquor

stores whose painted signs read milk, cigarettes,

we accept wic. When he reaches me he reaches

for me, touches me on my shoulder until each

name listed flies from my shirt like a ribbon,

circles my head like a marquee until each name

stiffens from my head into compass needles

jutting toward their unique destinations. To be circled

that way by the dead, haloed by names

that make the bus glass shatter after each one flies

back to the site of its owner’s death.

And I know, for I am there with each name,

have been split into eleven rays of myself to fly

back to Los Angeles, Sanford, Oakland, Queens,

Jacksonville, Brooklyn, Ferguson, Cleveland,

the Bronx, Staten Island, North Charleston,

the dark bottom of the Tallahatchie River,

each place a thread to suture the grievance

left where the dead had been left, the names

magnetized to a sidewalk, a door stoop,

a parking lot, a street where the bodies are not

here, no stone rolled back but the bodies

are gone, the names cannot bring them back

and they shake as if mourning and I am made

to shake with them, can see the seams

of now snapping open, the scene behind the scenes

where vision remakes and obscures

time and place, the seams popping where

thumbs and timelines work swiftly to keep them shut.

Somewhere behind the skull of the events,

in the resonant nothing, I can hear it rupture

and wonder what was there in the inconceivable

where it seems laughter pours from the dark,

the sound of it making me afraid

to be alone in the sepulchral streets, in the gas

station’s blinding neon, in my own body,

to return to myself with that sound as part of me

and what then, and what now—

a laughter like static into which the names slip,

into where the openings have broken most

free before the eager thumbs work nimbly

to sew it all back closed, back to the surface

of the place where knowledge and arrogance

wear the same mask, where a fog of faces

in their complexions of horror blanket seeing,

and my eleven selves rush back to my twelfth self

on that bus, reenter my body, and the man

who touches my shoulder asks me the sources

of the names as though requesting a citation,

but I am wearing a blank black shirt

and tell him so, the release

complete, his confused look his own

business as he sees the names and

points, brushes

his finger against me

so that I can feel his seeing,

there, there he speaks into the wiped-clean, into

the voided-out

that is a blank screen onto which lives I cannot

ever knowingly imagine

begin to begin.

Final Poem for War During War

FINAL POEM FOR WAR DURING WAR

Questions for the war poem to host:

Who among us could weave one ghost

into another? Where find water hosted

but in the tulip’s snapped back and tilted

cup? How count the escaped’s speed by silt

dragged from one ruin to another? Wilt,

sings the sky’s dayfabric unwoven into grayscale

as though night could coax from a star a paler

face, but when night arrives on the felled

back of a mule winged on either side by baskets

of water and rotten grapes, what verb is tasked

with this weight? How many missiles cast

their light above a child’s gait? When do lions,

banished to the hills, water their hunger, lie on

their roars till the vultures pile on?

How many ways can I write exile

having myself never been exiled?

What is the face of exile

besides the one hidden beneath the pyre

of music peeling from a liar’s

head? Bless the maenads, that they retire

only after this laughable poet is dead.

Interlude: Sasa and Zamani

INTERLUDE: SASA AND ZAMANI

Because you were ancestor, because living dead and loved, in your necessary addiction you toed the roots of the banyan tree from underground, fiddling with your skullcap while saying my name in a mirror of groundwater. I saw you just the other day standing in the corner of my room at the corner of my eye, cornering my truth like a panther, remaining quarter-visible while I typed you into half-recollection, into forever the hand that held mine then undid the holding. Because I refuse to look the dead in the eye, I minded you like I mind dark shapes darting peripheral after I leave a room. My Egbe have hungers. My living makes room for finite cycles, a staircase spiraled to a point. If I die after my younger sister, you will become unknown, mortal-proofed. On the altar for my ancestors, I leave for you my favorite candy. You will love what I love. Florida water flares citrus from your obituary’s fold. You were sweet when you were here. Forever be my father in your becoming forever.

Final Poem for Amiri Baraka

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