choking down entire argument in record time
continuing calculations are getting far closer
to where i want to be than where i need to be
unhealthy eroticism is in sensitivity training
so that it won't be instantaneously spooked

Scribe. With a name known only to himself. Waits to pen letters to friends in Tunisia
Algiers, Morocco, or
Amsterdam. Writing to family, we scribble thumbnail sketches of ourselves, or who
we remember startled us

He’s come to hate the academy, its sterile rigors.
Steel rails, parallel; long ribbon of wooden ties:
all night, all day, trains rattle that whole apparatus.
He lays his poem anthology on the track.

we’re cycling & recycling as fast as we can but can’t get there in time
for the job, the damaged free stuff, the barbed assignation,
and usually need to replace something by the time we get home—
a tire, a lens, an ankle.

You, volunteer:
You know the difference
Between cause and effect:
The people on the street
Are too stupid to have homes
Too filthy to wash

I sense my grandmothers.
I am now the age
they always seemed to be
with stern blood understanding
once removed from the sting of judgment.

This flower was labeled Whitey;
this flower was marked Nigga Lover.
     Is she still alive?
     Didn’t he pass recently?
     Was it in the paper?

There’s something straining us. Since birth we praised
his lineage, put wealth at his command,
and hubris has obeyed. He lifts his hand,
the throngs align, his inner organs raised

it is not yet complete:
some of us are still here, webbed with
confused winds, the dirt below us
cold, moving in new directions.
we notice all fall down quicker than before,

i listen to the impatient dead
who never existed, however much
i wish they had lived their absence

I’ll return as Queen of Sheba, or a vampire, or a reiver,
or a saint who cures the nouveaux riches, a wondrous, wealthy soul.
Yes, you see, I’ve found my niche, to preach and prosper, marvelous goal!
(Pills I took just took their toll.)

you cozy up to anyone
stepping off a freight train
with a patch above their hearts

…death’s heads some absence here or of what sensed in outstretched limbs a broken jawline’s exigency/ stone winds resurgence ever where nothing of reeks blind taste some solace no return again begin again/ in wind’s reveal of collapse bitten as if to cherish pummeling absurdly lock associative/ till skull skinned screaming in an abort of flame settling into ash...

assistance     gone     alone with both     lonely     days without     both fluish angry needing   not
their fault     hungry   homework     nights without    can’t sleep, doesn’t      doctor says just one
pill per     small hands stretching, reaching     must watch them closely   always       loads of
laundry   hungry   exhaustion     just one pill     bedwetting wakes older   regression   consoling

11 major organ systems
Size 12 ft.
22 sq. ft. skin

Brown girl, brown girl
her guilt is so deep and juicy in her thigh bone

that when her God consumes her, she is sure
He will suck the seasoned marrow

“We are certain that there is some connection between poltergeists and puberty and that the mysteries of sex enter largely into their doings. And all the available evidence points to the fact that poltergeists prefer girl adolescents to boys - the ratio is about 95% to 5% respectively.”
          —Harry Price, “Can we Explain the Poltergeist?” (1945)

the onion you lay line by line,
a hybrid thing both occidental and oriental

is a struggle against the void.
Hybrid like love cold, like love hot, like love open-ended.

lips bursting more
               men in me
children I uphold the heavens
drunker than country