Even the dirt dreams of it now.
It is two roads along two rivers,
The sky above a mother’s face

The day her husband leaves
For war. No blood and stars
But the blood and stars.

Let’s find it and break its fucking neck,
Let’s break its fucking jaw.
Let’s break its fucking ganged in vessels

And if it pushes back and a tiny blue rises
On its cheek, let’s break that too
Until stars dance in the corners

Of its eyes like white seeds
And let’s break those too
Until all the words we know are split in two.

No power but the power of need.
Let’s get up ready to feel.

God bless the rage in us.
It’s how we know each other.
We who keep vigil by the windows,

We who pour ashes from the windows
Into the wind, skin passing over skin.
Let’s walk up the hill and along the rows

That do not ask questions.
Near the white and yellow flowers,
Strangers are moored in sighs.

Soon it will rise without kissing
Anyone goodbye.
It says we will not be renewed,

We will not be filled
Like the birdhouse.
It says we will arrive unwashed.

Aren’t you tired? Let’s lie down.
Let’s cry out and rest.

WIND IN A BOX

WIND IN A BOX

I claim in the last hour of this known hysterical breathing,
that I have nothing to give but a signature of wind,
my type-written handwriting reconfiguring the past.

To the boy with no news of my bound and bountiful kin,
I offer twelve loaves of bread. Governed by hunger,
he wanted only not to want. What is the future

beyond a premonition? What is the past
beyond desire? To my brother, I leave a new suit, a tie
made of silk and shoes with unscuffed bottoms.

To the mirror, water; to the water, a book with no pages,
the author’s young face printed on the spine.
I wanted children taller than any man on earth.

If everyone was like me, I said to the mirror.
To my lover, I leave enough stories to fill an evening.
Enough sleep to walk from one coast to another

without pause. I held no counsel with God.
I cut open the fruit of a tree without speaking to the tree.
I ate food prepared by strangers. To the black cashier,

I leave nothing. Her story is like the one I was given.
To all the carpenters looking at the ceiling, nothing.
Here in the last moments of my illiterate future,

may the people know I did not matter.
Shoeprints at the door. Shoeprints on the old road.
To the boy with two lights going on and off in his stare,

I leave the riddle of the turtle who had shelter,
but no company. To the black girl, grace. To the black girl,
mirrors; a father blessed with the gift of mind-reading,