Chapters (50)

Now all of Okemah, Oklahoma, is hushed.
Now even the children in attendance are dead.
After that day in 1911, it did not rain again.
To believe in God, this is the reckoning I claim.

It is a Monday morning years too late.
All the rocking chairs & shopping carts,
all the mailboxes & choir pews are empty.
I cannot hear the psalms of salvation
or forgiveness, the gospel of Mercy.
I cannot ask who is left more disfigured:
the ones who are beaten or the ones who beat;
the ones who are hung or the ones who hang.

THE BLUE TERRANCE

I loved Bruce Lee and a ten dollar ukulele.
For my little mutt Shepherd and the saplings,
I performed black Superman melodramas barefoot
on the picnic table until a toenail opened
on my big toe like the hood of my father’s Lincoln
and a fever broke. I dropped stuff.
I showed Erica (my queen) McQueen
my junior penis. I showed Connie Simpson,
I showed Meko Jackson, I showed Precious Jones,
and again and again they split like pigtails
on a trampoline. (I wanted to possess
and be possessed.) I was not allowed
to make eggs and rice or lasagna.
“Blood!” my gang said. “Blood, blood, blood!”
until someone fainted. We were The Booty Snatchers
until a fifth grader slapped Ronnie.
We were The Hell Cats until Sammy & The Big Dawgs
jumped the fence. We were The Dream Team
until we awakened. There was a boy
who could win at H-O-R-S-E on crutches.
There was a girl in a black training bra
and a mother in silk pajamas. That was the year
Baybay held me out a window by my ankles.
I began an obsessive regimen of drawing
Peanuts. (Charlie Brown began with an O.)
I was not allowed to take showers.
There was a deep inarticulate grief
for David Banner and a high frothing euphoria
for the Hulk. There was a law
that said sooner or later you’ll hear the rivers
of the skull, the small islands
where volcanoes erupt. (I waited to erupt.)
I kept my head up to keep the blood off

my sneakers. I feared roaches more than divorce.
My muscles weighed less than my skin.
My neighbor, Mr. Black Belt, nearly broke my wrist
before he vanished. Let’s just say all those knuckle-
sandwiches taught me mercy. If you can remember
the dreams where your mouth is full of mulch,
you can imagine the tongue in a granny knot,
a train wreck of a sentence jammed inside a throat,
a gullet piping steam, the air inside a fist.