I. To Those Who Died

If I had a glass to raise
I'd pour champagne on
Mass graves,
Shelves of skeletons,
Skulls in single layers filling
Church basements,
And soil in the coutryside
Where the burial sites
Have not yet been
Unearthed.

I'd give bubbly to the bones
Of those who died
Before their first taste.

To those who died,
Because they owned ten cows or more
And had milk with their meals
While neighbors drank water.

To those who died,
Because they didn't have enough
Banana wine
For bribes
To save their lives.

To those who died,
Because they didn't have enough
Time to hide.
Because they hadn't lied
About their father's tribe.

To those who died,
Because they wouldn't confide
Where their killers could find
Cockroaches on that hillside,
Neighbors who'd run before dawn,
Their cattle, grazing in hiding, and
Where their children had gone.

To those who died, for being
The taller man
The longer nose
The leaner build
The lighter skin,
The more beautiful women.

I'd toast to those who died.



II. To Those Who Survived

If I had a glass to raise
Of champagne,
I'd toast to those
Sitting around this table
Sixteen years later.
"Here's to being alive!"

A toast to those who survived.

Old age in the cities
Vanished
In the beginning.
Stopped for proof of identity
Shot along the roads
Leading from the country.
And the young ones?

Left to flee.

Old age in the villages
Cut down slowly
By machete
Carving women into widows.
And the young ones?

Run past piled bodies.

Old age on the hillsides
Hides under banana leaves
Waiting to run at night
Dying during daylight
From hunger, thirst, and fear
For the young ones?

Wondering when old age disappears.

Leaning over your desk, staring at calculus
I learned to solve at sixteen.

I’ll direct you to the nearest solution-
You have one hour left to reach, but
Have gotten too lost to see-
If you stop to ask me.

But you won’t, so
I won’t wait.
You don’t, and
I say nothing.

Kissing slightly,
Along your t-shirt’s edge, I leave
My mouth shut
And your neck wet.

Sheets of computer paper and
Snapped mechanical pencil tips
Sprinkled with eraser bits,
Cover the floor around your feet.

You punch your calculator keys while beneath your desk
I'm on my knees.

A man of twenty
Looks much younger
Waiting at the southside bus station in a
Suit and sneakers,
Hat strings
Dangling into his collar,
Anxious with his hands idle.

A man holding my bags and waist
On a subway train that
Shakes our bodies closer
Looks his age and older,
Holding us still.

The first week of the new year was
Sleeping in past two,
Sleeping in my birthday suit,
        in my boyfriend's bed,
        in his childhood room.

My grandmother's hands, dressed in
Sterling silver bands
And stacked bangles
Making music
When she salts
Slices of ham

I. Our First Time

We road tripped to new lives - together
Unsteady
On the highway
In the high winds
Whinneying
Space between
Windows and their
Worn seals,
Keeping our silence
Secret


II. Talk About Religion

This Athiest said
True love
IS his God;
Finally
I know
I don't believe in it.


III. Studio Apartment

On Lia Jade's
Slick hardwood kitchen
Floor, in the dark,
I think more than I write
And put the notebook down
For a one-woman sit-in
On my first night in Boston.

I Want to
Wake up to
My favorite band and your hand
Between my thighs.

I want
Your *******,
Cold and steady,
Pushing inside to open my eyes.

I want a fifteen minute
forceful kiss; You
Rolling me over
With your lips.
I want
All ten of your fingertips
To draw me a pretty picture.

I want you–
When you see
My fingers spread,
Like my toes before curling,
Or my trembling legs-

To pull my thighs
Away from center,
Pushing each farther
From the other.
Like one bed
With two angry lovers,
Hugging its opposite edges;
Your hand in the space between them.

Sun leaks through bullet holes in the sheet-tin ceiling,
Sprinkling light on dead mens' clothing
Piled stiff with dried blood and dust of fifteen years.

What does it mean when the stained glass windows
Left intact
Let in less light to this church
Than the small holes in its brick walls
Made by grenades  
Thrown from the hands of its priests?

What does is mean when the left overs of dead believers are
Speckled the holy white color of
Bird ****
That drips
From the bullet holes above?

Nearing the aisle's end,
I feel an urge to touch
What I don't believe I see

And look more closely.

Tangled human hairs, crusted blood,
Loose threads torn from hand-stitched hems, in shreds,
And insects nesting in the decay of the dead.

I recoil and suddenly, reach...

The tour guide asks
If I'd like to photograph
The bullet hole
In his forehead.

He was one of six survivors and
Gives white people tours five days a week
Of the forty thousand dead,
Pointing out his baby brother's bones,
His mother's skirt,
His lover's toes.

This survivor knows.
With a bullet to the head
He escaped death,
But not the days he lived
Piled amongst the dead.

Standing still and silent,
I respond only in smiling
To his insistence I take pictures
Of tragedy's remaining pieces and
Strangers' screaming skeletons.

Take more, he tells me, always.
A smile, one arm folded formally behind his back,
The other pointing from bone to bone.

I hold my camera to my eyes,
Pretend to press a button every few seconds
While following behind.

I can not take anything from a place already *****.
Except for this man and the bullet he carries,
Nothing is left.

Here, I can not take photographs.

Junior high hallways of
Girls kissing, without meaning
It
Like boys getting the erections they
Did not hide
From those wishing to see them shy,
But not away.

Sisters were a specialty with
Incestual immunity-
A senior class with nine sets of twins and
Two-hundred, watching them share chapstick.

Girls at liberal arts school,
Painting our ******* like we were wearing the same dress
To the weekend's party
And could dance ourselves clean
Without touching a thing.

In Spring, the Bennington bookstore special-ordered
THE KISS posters
Stuck on girls' ceilings that semester like
Plastic stars
Glowing in the dark above their beds-
Alone, watching white-pantied girlfriends
Lick lips above their heads.

We moved mattresses,
Made floors into king-size beds, and mocked manliness
Our boyfriends' weariness when they visited.

Holding roommates and classmates naked by the *******,
We found by spooning each other
How deeply we fell asleep.
To wake up, stretching in the sunlight of open curtains
No one would tell us to shut.

Quickly, we were moving to Boston with our boyfriends and making
Pairs of plans,
Then abandoning each at our own pace,
Like we'd talked about at night before we'd have to have that pain.

Years later, I followed my lover to meet his parents,
Who took us to dinner, and after,
My head on his childhood pillow,
Looked up at two girls kiss.

Tonight it's stinging while I ***
Men plucking bottles from bins below the window
Must be watching me
Shudder
On the warm toilet seat.

I live where a man rubbing
White shoe cream on his leather loafers has ulcers
From malnutrition and constant cassava.

Where a man’s sister loves his Fossil watch
And avocados, but gives
The whole fruit to her hate child.

The road is walked in the morning by
Rwandans, the jerry cans on their heads wetting their chests
With water from the spigot, half an hour away.

Nike shoes are unstitched, laces
Washed white daily and
The drinking water is gone by seven p.m.

I live where black people go thirsty keeping
Their sneakers white; throats dry each morning
While lacing their shoes.

Claude spreads the legs of his first girlfriend and
Recognizes the in-between
From his sister’s.

She was seventeen and silent;
He, six and sobbing,
Pushing the bamboo deeper
After
The men who ate
Dinner with his father
The week before
Told him to.

They said he had to **** her; said
He was a Tutsi, and limp, and finally,

“Farther!”

She was wet with blood and he with tears
Crouched down in the grass.

At twenty-one,
Claude hovers above
His first love
With closed eyes and dry cheeks.
She is wet, with want, and
Whimpering.

Not from
A stick’s broken branches,
Or twelve men
Holding her knees apart
“Showing a cockroach how it’s done,”
One by one
Ants crawling toward her blood.

Claude hears her closed-lip whimpers,
Says how much he’ll always love her, and
Cannot come.

I. A1 Love

Adam drips steak sauce
Leaves you, trails, closed dorm room doors
And walks with no shame

II. Ten Dollar Bet

The gas light is on
Passing Exit 8, screaming,
(I) know we'll make it

III. Class and Ketchup

"It will **** you," but
While you eat chicken nuggets
I take your picture

IV. Jamaica Plain

At midnight sharp, we
Can not park, but pose with trees,
Find yellow houses.

V. Lost in Boston

Sacajawea
******, so I asked nicely to
Cut in front of cars.

VI. Winthrop

The "No Dumping" sign
Was where you ******, then made me
Come smell the ocean.

A baby from Burundi sits next to me today.
He coos and drinks and swallows his mother’s milk.
His father speaks Swahili. Smiles, tells me that his last son
Is going to grow old in Rochester, NY,
Where I sit in a white-walled waiting room, watching
Mothers drag their babies by the armpits to be weighed.

A boy with braided beads holds up four fingers and tells me he is five.
He is too skinny. His pants are sagging and his iron is low.
His mother takes his vegetable checks, stuffs them into the back pocket of her jeans.
What the little **** needs is two percent milk, she says,
Her gold hoops fluttering.

Her son struggles with the small wooden chair he is carrying.
It drags along the carpet, hitting the high spots, and his tiny biceps flinch.
He sits, facing me, while a name is called. And another.
Another woman’s son hands me a book and waits.
He is watching my face and I watch his mother kiss her boyfriend in the first row seats.
He tucks his chin to his chest when I ask his name. Whispers, tells me Jayden.

First page. What color is Elmo, Jayden?
Shoulders shrugging. His lower lip, puckered out and innocent.
What color is he, Jayden?

The color of Jayden’s skin slaps me across the heart when he says he doesn’t know.
He was born in Rochester, NY,
With trash bags and Burger King wrappers wrapped around the fence
That separates his house from the street on which he will grow old
Too soon.
He starts kindergarten in the fall and I tell him Elmo is red, like his t-shirt.
Like his mother’s fingernails.
Like the tomatoes and bell peppers and beets he has never seen.

A girl who went to my High School carries in her youngest child
Who is old enough to walk, but wobbles.
She calls her daughter “thunder-thighs” instead of Jazmyne
And strips off her shoes. Her belt. Her gold bracelets.
The scale says Jazmyne is too heavy for food assistance.
The state says her mother isn’t poor enough for welfare.
The girl I used to know leaves without her daughter’s shoes or the food checks she came for.

In conversations of pretension
We talk about first and third world.
Pretend that America is the land of second chances
Where a baby from Burundi can grow old in cashmere sweaters,
Even when his parents couldn’t pay.

The father who speaks Swahili looks at his shiny watch and his family’s vegetable checks.
Smiles. Tells me his last son is going to grow old and full
In Rochester, NY.