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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

018019What’s the deal with you and Elizabeth?
What’s the deal with you and Diana,
the Butch Diva, for that matter?
Once you could have had the love of anyone.
I can still remember your hyper-glow socks
and fly tuxedo. Sometimes my thoughts drift
to Billie Jean, that condemned anonymous woman.
What ever happened to her and that baby?020021022023024025026027What’s a brother got to do to get an answer,
Brother? If by chance, this is the first of my letters
you are reading (I’ve written dozens
over the years), let me say again
that I understand a man’s hunger for company.
When I moved North and phoned home
to tell my momma I’d fallen in love,
she asked me if the girl was white and I snapped,
“No Ma, she looks like you!”
That’s got to be one of the most outrageous
(maybe most reasonable) questions,
my mother has ever asked me . . .
“Take love where you find it,” “Water is the color
of what holds it,” and all that.
What does your mother think of your hair
and lipstick? Of all the girls’ noses
pressed at your limo window in 1982,
which did she most adore?

THE BLUE BARAKA

THE BLUE BARAKA

We go waaaaay back, America.
Like mutts in the bed of a pickup.
Like righteous indignations.
Like riotous ignitions. Like far right-
wing indicators blinking
white&black, white&black, white&black—
They don’t share our values, you say.
I gave you my life / you gave me
my life, America. Some of us fog
up the grapes and some of us vomit
money. Some of us bag boys. Some of us
Lerois, some of us Charlie too Browns
too. Some of us black-eyed, brown-
eyed idlers. Some of us be best friends
or fried fiends, but all of us be
floundering interiors, be all these things
at once, America. Why you be?
Why you be decked in suits
of metal? Indefatigable. Empty
fat. Inflatable. Laughable and lost.
Why you be funkying up the holy waters
and memorizing the same Biblical bullshit?
He shall separate us one from the other,
as a shepherd divideth his sheep, you say.
He shall divideth the chain from the gang,
divideth the pepper from the pepper-spray,
you say. You say: They don’t share
our values. America, how you talk
with such little lips? How you sleep
with such little rhythm?
How you live with such little music?
You be your own ship at sea.
You be your own shadow off course,

the last hour, the shroud of transgressions. You be a white, blue and ready-made utopia for some; you be over-cooked and crooked, a scythe of bite marks, an odor of orders for others.

THE BLUE BORGES

THE BLUE BORGES