Prelude to Bruise Read online

  JASPER, 1998

  in memory of James Byrd Jr.

  I.

  Go back: my throat still

  crowded with dirt

  and loose teeth

  but I speak

  (tongue slick with iron)

  but I speak

  in the language of sharp turns.

  II.

  Go back: I accept this ride.

  Tired, don’t want to walk

  home.

  It’s not far, but far

  enough. I accept

  this ride.

  Three nice men,

  white men,

  a bit too nice,

  but I accept: no backseat driver.

  Smile, ride, quiet.

  Could have taken

  that last turn,

  but I accept these men,

  their sense of direction,

  but I live

  on the other side of town.

  Smile, ride, quiet.

  Another turn

  I wouldn’t take. This road,

  back road,

  wrong way,

  too far.

  Smile

  with questions

  in my eyes.

  Ride

  backseat, sure is

  better than walking.

  Quiet

  middle of nowhere,

  tight-lipped white men,

  no other cars around,

  no sound but my heart.

  Where (say it)

  Where (louder)

  Where

  are we going?

  III.

  Chain gang, work song, back road,

  my body.

  Chain gang, work song, back road,

  my body.

  These men play me dirty

  tell my back to sing or break.

  Hard-won rattle

  of chains

  dragged behind this truck,

  louder than what little sound

  is left in my throat.

  Pavement becomes a skin-tight

  drum,

  they take my teeth

  for piano keys.

  My God,

  this song: one man

  chain gang, playing this road.

  Every stick,

  every pebble: this road

  this song.

  Hear me, Jasper.

  Hear me for miles.

  LOWER NINTH

  New Orleans, March 2011

  For the city and its clogged arteries of light,

  a ward of wild grass to answer the absence

  of foundation. How the jasmine vine rests

  its hands on the abandoned sill for a month,

  then pulls itself into the cool dark. And how,

  driving through (but not walking), you point

  to where you once were sent for milk, detergent,

  whatever was needed from the corner store

  and the jagged slab of concrete the water left

  behind. You wonder which states the neighbors

  moved to, and if they are thinking of what you

  see: how the crabgrass eventually won, streets

  empty aside from the refrigerator that floated

  into the avenue unquestioned and stayed,

  and how low it all is and why.

  DRAG

  The dress is an oil slick. The dress

  ruins everything. In a hotel room

  by the water, I put it on when

  he says, I want to watch you take it off.

  Zipping me up, he kisses the mile

  markers of my spine. I can’t afford

  this view. From here, I see a city

  that doesn’t know it’s already

  drowning. My neck shivers from

  the trail of his tongue. I keep my

  eyes on the window, just past

  his bald spot. He’s short. I can see

  the rain that has owned us for weeks

  already. The dress will survive us.

  The dress will be here when men

  come in boats to survey the damage.

  He makes me another drink, puts

  on some jazz, and the dress begins

  to move without me. Slow like something

  that knows it cannot be stopped,

  the dress seeps. The dress slides

  with my body floating inside,

  an animal caught in the sludge.

  If he wraps his arms around me,

  it will be the rest of his life.

  I don’t even know what I am

  in this dress; I just sway with

  my arms open and wait.

  KUDZU

  I won’t be forgiven

  for what I’ve made

  of myself.

  Soil recoils

  from my hooked kisses.

  Pines turn their backs

  on me. They know

  what I can do

  with the wrap of my legs.

  Each summer,

  when the air becomes crowded

  with want, I set all my tongues

  upon you.

  To quiet this body,

  you must answer

  my tendriled craving.

  All I’ve ever wanted

  was to kiss crevices, pry them open,

  and flourish within dew-slick

  hollows.

  How you mistake

  my affection.

  If I ever strangled sparrows,

  it was only because I dreamed

  of better songs.

  BEHEADED KINGDOM

  I.

  With his one good knife, a door is cut to where the spine waits: patient,

  then flaring. All my lights turned on. A scream is loosed,

  grey silk sound pulled out by hooks, black before the filaments.

  Quiet, he begs, rakish doctor. Then a hand goes in.

  II.

  He takes his time to walk the bright house of me.

  Each room rococo, floored with mahogany. A wealth of blood cells flickering

  red, then blue, red, then blue in shadow boxes. Here, a room of rare orchids

  the color of a drinker’s liver.

  III.

  Do you understand the song you’ve sent walking through my catacombs

  of marrow? Black parasol notes hum, dirge of the removed

  lung. I now know the promise of a body scooped hollow, tea lights

  in the torso’s cave. You’ve come inside from another country

  and I have so much to give.

  THRALLDOM

  I survived on mouthfuls of hyacinth.

  My hunger did not apologize.

  Stamens licked clean, pollinated

  throat; Beauty was what I choked on.

  When the men with cruel tongues

  worked me, each grunt gnashed

  between my teeth. One fogged

  night to the next, my palm

  pressed against each thrust.

  How else to say more

  please under the sweat

  and heave of their bodies?

  CRUEL BODY

  You answer his fistand the blow

  shatters you to sparks.

  Unconsciousis a better place, but swim back

  to yourself.

  Behind a door you can’t open,he drinks

  to keep loving you,

  then wades out into the blue hour.

  Still on the floor, waitingfor your name

  to claim your mouth.

  Get up. Find your legs,

  leave.

  THALLIUM

  If I held out the candle, paraffin burning for him,

  then swallowed all the light, if

  in the dark, I was a cobra’s tongue,

  how could it have been his fault?

  Robber baron, unzipped vagabond, he mistook me

  for the comfort of a small creek, water crawling along the backs

  of rocks, emerald house beside it,

  me
at the door in nothing

  but welcome.

  Over wine, I warned him

  soft

  you can’t sleep here; you won’t

  wake up.

  In the snuffed room, my touch serrated

  bit of tooth

  or switchblade.

  Even a peacock feather comes to a point.

  He thought

  I was kissing him.

  HE THINKS HE CAN LEAVE ME

  by leaving me,

  but even now

  I walk

  burning

  through the empty streets

  of his mind.

  Lonely

  little town, no sound

  but my footsteps.

  I grin,

  mouthful of hell

  my teeth

  soot black.

  In curlicues of smoke, I sing

  his name

  to the night

  and his darkness

  mistakes me

  for sunrise.

  3

  SECONDHAND (SMOKE)

  I borrowed his body just like

  this.I wanted, so I had his wrist

  like this: held the bones easiest to breaklike so, arched in question

  and the cigarette,a sixth finger lit, tilted,ash outlining the exhaled yes—

  Even if the yes was palimpsest,

  each breath confusing the other for a blow of smoke,

  it matters that I had him hereonce.

  Even held down, even pinned, ersatz: the idea of his body,

  a yes of my own.

  I stole his tongue; now he can’t say no.

  His yes is mine to keep,mine to answer

  my own questions with, like:

  Now that I’ve mined you, are you mine?

  I spell his body with smoke, breathe him

  into the seat beside me. Black lung to blacker lung

  and ever waiting: his answer isjustlike—

  BODY & KENTUCKY BOURBON

  In the dark, my mind’s night, I go back

  to your work-calloused hands, your body

  and the memory of fields I no longer see.

  Cheek wad of chew tobacco,

  Skoal-tin ring in the back pocket

  of threadbare jeans, knees

  worn through entirely. How to name you:

  farmhand, Kentucky boy, lover.

  The one who taught me to bear

  the back-throat burn of bourbon.

  Straight, no chaser, a joke in our bed,

  but I stopped laughing; all those empty bottles,

  kitchen counters covered with beer cans

  and broken glasses. To realize you drank

  so you could face me the morning after,

  the only way to choke down rage at the body

  sleeping beside you. What did I know

  of your father’s backhand or the pine casket

  he threatened to put you in? Only now,

  miles and years away, do I wince at the jokes:

  white trash, farmer’s tan, good ole boy.

  And now, alone, I see your face

  at the bottom of my shot glass

  before my own comes through.

  ECLIPSE OF MY THIRD LIFE

  Hunger is who we are

  under a black lacquered moon.

  Undone in his flashlit arms, is this my body anymore?

  Red Chinese kite in the night of my throat,

  no one can see.

  Unpaved road that veers

  into fragments of bone, a drive only he knows.

  Spine stitched to shadow’s edge, I lose my head

  to grass when his want walks

  the length of me, king of my beheaded kingdom.

  Stars are just jewelry stolen from graves, he sighs,

  pressing me into loam, amaryllis shoots

  already owning my dark. I’ll wake, a garden

  gated in April light,

  my veins in every leaf.

  GUILT

  Five years gone but my body

  is back in the truck beside you,

  speeding toward the dogs

  we cannot see but are about to hit.

  It is not dark. Midday, windows

  down. Wind runs all its hands

  through the hair of every tree

  we pass & maybe this is where

  I close my eyes & say, “It sounds

  like the ocean.” Maybe you are

  on the edge of an answer when

  three dogs that were not in the road

  suddenly are. Before I can see

  their eyes, before I am even sure

  they are there, the yelp of injury

  & smack against metal are the same

  sound. You pull over. I open my

  door before you can say you

  are too afraid to get out. The walk

  to the front of your truck is hours,

  but I am there now & the dog

  is not. No dent. No blood.

  The road that was an empty road

  is an empty road. The wind

  & trees have turned into waves again.

  You don’t believe me. “We hit

  that dog,” you hiss, now out

  of the truck. We both stare

  at the dent, the blood; the dogs

  are not there. A rustle

  in the trees at the edge of the road,

  but no eyes looking out at us.

  SLEEPING ARRANGEMENT

  I’ve decided: you will stay

  under our bed, on the floor

  not even in the space between

  mattress and metal frame.

  Take your hand out

  from under my pillow.

  And take your sheets with you.

  Drag them under. Make pretend ghosts.

  I can’t have you rattling the bedsprings

  so keep still, keep quiet.

  Mistake yourself for shadows.

  Learn the lullabies of lint.

  *

  I will do right by you:

  crumbs brushed off my sheets,

  white chocolate chips

  or the corners of crackers.

  Count on the occasional dropped grape,

  a peach pit with dried yellow hairs.

  I’ve heard some men can survive

  on dust mites alone for weeks at a time.

  There’s a magnifying glass on the nightstand,

  in case it comes to that.

  APOLOGIA

  If I started with the words He made me—

  not like He created me,

  not like With my clothes off, you can still see his thumbprints

  in the clay that became my skin.

  No. If I started with He made me

  lick the taste of bullet

  from the barrel of his revolver

  would you use your body to guard my body tonight?

  The roof has been ripped off and the stars refuse

  to peel their stares from my bruises.

  I didn’t mean He

  as in God; I meant the man I traded you for.

  KETAMINE & COMPANY

  Strobe-lit and slick with music,

  I set my hair on fireso you can find me on the dance floor.

  What’s the word in Spanish?

  Singed, then smokedout: I’m your black matador, blood only

  makes me readier.I’ve traded my lungs for fog machines.

  You won’t breathe tonight

  without getting high on me.

  I’m burning.I’m not

  burning.I’m

  dancing.I’m hell.Guernica on all fours. Horse-mouthed and—

  How do you say easy?

  The pill on my tongue catches light like a doomed moon

  and we throw our half-drunk drinks to the floor.

  Crunch to the crack to the crack to the—

  glass shards in my soles;my diamond moves.

  Using my right nostril

  now,us
e me,you can

  use me if you want,I’m easy,I’m so, so easy.

  Say it in Spanish. Yeah. Say easy.

  I’m good.

  I work the dance floor untilI am the dance floor. Get on me,

  baby. You promised you wouldn’t let me do this

  alone.

  Why aren’t you on me yet?

  THRALLDOM II

  Bluegrass, horsewhip, blue moon, bruise.

  All fours, steel bit, steel gag, work. Good hurt, hurts good, his lap, smack.

  Fishnets, lips pursed, knife wound—red. First pose, third pose, head thrown

  back. This way, that way, shit boy, slap.

  Want more, black moor, unmoored, loosed. Limp wrist, broke wrist, rag doll, thrown. Backseat, head down, headlights, off. His car, his house, locked room, owned. Break loose, new town, fake name, loaned.

  Run hard, look back, go back, owned.

  Same bit, same gag, third pose, smack.

  Horsewhip, hurts bad, head thrown, slap.

  Head down, shit boy, look back, bruise. Want more,

  fight back, no more, unleashed, this way

  out.

  SKIN LIKE BRICK DUST

  In bed, your back curved

  to answer the heat of my holding

  & Harlem was barely awake below us

  when a half-broken building

  gave in. First, a few loose bricks,

  then decades crashed to the street

  just as a bus pulled up. Passengers

  choking on dust rushed

  to escape the wreck

  of someone else’s memory.

  Two blocks beyond gravity,