Chapters (50)

and a pink glistening bud. If the wildflower and ant hill
can return after sleeping each season, I want to walk
out of this house wearing nothing but wind.

I want to greet you, I want to wait for the bus with you
weighing less than a chill. I want to fight off the bolts

of gray lighting the alcoves and winding paths
of your hair. I want to fight off the damp nudgings
of snow. I want to fight off the wind.

I want to be the wind and I want to fight off the wind
with its sagging banner of isolation, its swinging

screen doors, its gilded boxes, and neatly folded pamphlets
of noise. I want to fight off the dull straight lines
of two by fours and endings, your disapprovals,

your doubts and regulations, your carbon copies.
If the locust can abandon its suit,

I want a brand new name. I want the pepper’s fury
and the salt’s tenderness. I want the virtue
of the evening rain, but not its gossip.

I want the moon’s intuition, but not its questions.
I want the malice of nothing on earth. I want to enter

every room in a strange electrified city
and find you there. I want your lips around the bell of flesh

at the bottom of my ear. I want to be the mirror,
but not the nightstand. I do not want to be the light switch.
I do not want to be the yellow photograph

or book of poems. When I leave this body, Woman,
I want to be pure flame. I want to be your song.

WIND IN A BOX

If so, let me go on into the imaginary city.
At first, how cool it would be
to recite a dozen prayers as a last name.

Or as no last name at all. Words passed
to me by strangers. Let me enter
with a pre-assembled strut.

If my life amounts to a fence
between two dogs,
who wouldn’t want to disappear?

If it amounts to a lover’s teeth prints,
let me sleep a night or two in that city.
In the beginning was the couple burning

in the dark. See how that could go on
forever? If the imaginary city is cut through
by rivers, the idea makes me want bridges.

If it is lockless, let there be no thieves,
let there be no bad luck. Damn right.
If I am less than smoke to my mother,

the African-American, and less than smoke
to my father, the bull, so be it.
I know life is spent between two chasms.

Half buttoned. Nostalgia, the bread
by which we live. Say this:
“Half boy-funk, half emptiness.”

The only beauty curved towards my heart.
I turned my back to whatever divine yammering
filled me. I don’t call it the past, but I call it

something as predictable and far reaching.
Someone was waiting to be born.
And you’re right, someone was guilty.