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Chapters (50)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. Dedication
  4. Acknowledgements
  5. Epigraph
  6. WIND IN A BOX
  7. WOOFER (WHEN I CONSIDER THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN)
  8. TALK
  9. BLACK HISTORY
  10. ROOT
  11. I. MJ FAN LETTER
  12. II. A FEW RUMORS CONCERNING MR. POTATO HEAD
  13. III. OMNIPOP, 1982
  14. IV. RSVP
  15. THE BLUE BARAKA
  16. THE BLUE BORGES
  17. THE BLUE BOWIE
  18. THE BLUE ETHERIDGE
  19. HARRYETTE MULLEN LECTURE ON THE AMERICAN DREAM
  20. ORACLE
  21. MAUSOLEUM
  22. IT’S A SMALL WORLD
  23. I. New Orleans Piano Genius
  24. THE BLUE KOOL
  25. THE BLUE MELVIN
  26. THE BLUE SEUSS
  27. THE BLUE STROM
  28. PINE
  29. A GIRL IN THE WOODS
  30. THRESHOLD
  31. THE WHALE
  32. VARIATION ON A BLACK CINEMA TREASURE: BROKEN EARTH
  33. VARIATION ON A BLACK CINEMA TREASURE: BOOGIE WOOGIE BLUES
  34. TOUR DAUFUSKIE
  35. A POSTCARD FROM OKEMAH
  36. THE BLUE TERRANCE
  37. THE BLUE TERRANCE
  38. THE BLUE TERRANCE
  39. A SMALL NOVEL
  40. WIND IN A BOX - —after Lorca
  41. WIND IN A BOX
  42. WIND IN A BOX
  43. WIND IN A BOX
  44. IMAGINARY POEMS FOR THE OLD-FASHIONED FUTURE
  45. EVERYBODY GOES TO HEAVEN
  46. IT CAN’T BE GOOD SITTING AROUND IMAGINING YOUR DEATH
  47. THE HERITAGE CHANNEL
  48. WIND IN A BOX
  49. NOTES
  50. PENGUIN POETS

Thirty years later she looked into his coffin like someone looking
into water and smelled flowers pulled from the bank of a river,
grease in hair brushed flat, shoe polish, her twin half-sister
ringed in pearls and white silk, half the life she’d dreamed of at her
back.

We spent a few nights in the village.
Nights of inviolate beer and laughter.

Behind us waiting below the oak tree or on the red hoof-trampled
road
beyond the tree or further, in a house beneath a tin roof
the wind whistled through, a girl prayed
so intently for a dress that the prayer lingered in the blood
she passed on to her daughter and her daughter on to me.
Who said anything about slaves.

Muzzled in cool wind.
A few nights tethered together.

I would have believed history was beyond me,
had I no black suit and no umbrella
and had the carpet along the aisles not been so thick
my feet never touched the floor
and were Ma not saying Good God,
Good God and dabbing money at her eyes.
That’s why they call it Blood.

WIND IN A BOX

WIND IN A BOX

028

NOTES

NOTES

“The Blue Borges” is based predominantly on lines and details in Jorge Luis Borges’s Selected Poems (Penguin, 1999) and his essays in Everything and Nothing (New Directions, 1999). The Spanish line in the poem translates: “The love or the conversation of a few friends”; the German line translates: “Everything near becomes distant.” “The Blue Bowie” is inspired by lyrics from The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. “All modern thought is permeated by the idea of thinking the unthinkable” is a quote from Michel Foucault. “The Blue Etheridge” makes reference to Etheridge Knight’s poem “The Idea of Ancestry.” “The Blue Kool” is inspired by the rapper Kool Keith. “The Blue Melvin” is inspired by liner notes and lyrics from the CD The Melvin Van Peebles Collection (Stax, 1999). The “Upright Blues” sequence is dedicated to James Carroll Booker, the late great New Orleans pianist. The “Variations on a Black Cinema Treasure” poems are based on two film synopses from Black Cinema Treasures: Lost and Found by G. William Jones (University of North Texas Press, 1991). “A Postcard from Okemah” is based on a photograph in Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America (Twin Palm Publishers, 2000).

029

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Terrance Hayes is the author of Hip Logic (Penguin, 2002) and Muscular Music (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2005; Tia Chucha Press, 1999). His honors include a Whiting Writers Award, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, a National Poetry Series award, a Pushcart Prize, a Best American Poetry selection, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. He teaches in the English Department at Carnegie Mellon University and lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with his family.

PENGUIN POETS

PENGUIN POETS

TED BERRIGAN
The Sonnets

PHILIP BOOTH

Lifelines: Selected Poems 1950-1999

JIM CARROLL

Fear of Dreaming: The Selected Poems

Living at the Movies
Void of Course

BARBARA CULLY
Desire Reclining

ALISON HAWTHORNE DEMING

Genius Loci

CARL DENNIS

New and Selected Poems 1974-2004