Awakes, crack of dawn, morning
breath. Mouth opens, wonder
what sound  made first by it.
Song.

God,
for some of us it takes a long while,
      doesn't it? Voices
stunted from first primal primordial scream, ***-slap
      at birth, howls at the moon
in silent chest-beats when no longer an embryo
      looking,
at it, the sky, awe plastered onto face-canvas,
      suddenly you're a poet   but
God,
for some of us it takes   but a long, long   while
      for anything,
if anything,
      to be born from our ever-screaming
primal primordial airless silent empty
      ***-slap mouth-breath hand-wrought
song
      to sing, to be sung
to sing,
      to sing
                   to sing
                               to sing
                                           to sing.

She is brown.

A zebra burns to ashes in the middle of a traffic circle.

The University of Botswana was built by cows.

Chickens made music in the nighttime.

A goat glittered in the sky.

In the middle of Sir Seretse Khama International Airport, an elephant stands.

Do you like worms?

Sala sentle.

Tsamaya sentle.

Ke tla go bona.

There are many ways of saying goodbye in Setswana. It is okay. Go siame.

There were words once.
Meant to be heard and said across
various distances, sometimes
an eternity, seemingly, continents
pushed together into one, sometimes
a whisper, momentary, finally, lips-
they say things that very often mean
nothing. Nothing she says. What's wrong he asked.
Many things. Nothing at all. You press play
and something sings in your ears and you
wait for another flight to somewhere.
Nowhere feels everywhere at once, always,
which is why we built these planes. Sometimes
out of paper. As a child I did those things.
Watched how they gleamed across the tops
of my eyes- never too far they went.

My jet-lagged self sleeps early,
wakes early, sleeps again, reads.
Having watched one movie too many over summer
I relish the sounds designed above- a click
of a door handle, bare warm socks gliding
across wooden floor, the scrunch of toothbrush
against the rusting metal straightening yellowing teeth,
the few lone cars across the street, that hazy
early sound that only light can make as it
becomes aware of itself in my dorm room. What
kind of camera lens would make this moment more
livable and is it already dead?

Today, we marched, or rather, I watched him,
my friend, next to me dream. Of what futures, I'm not
quite aware. Some orange man has overtook
the american government everyone in their right mind
and heart
cried,
and a square in Boston was filled with lively
dreamers
with placards and gleaming eyes and faces
that said no! not again! A few toddlers
sauntered around the feet of their parents
saying and shouting and muttering and playing
with words and slogans they don't understand
yet in their minds,
maybe their hearts,
in them they know. Next to me my friend grabbed
an abandoned placard and I felt lost. I only
came to watch how the words of the orange man
came alight. I was afraid we would catch flame.
A grey-haired woman had earlier skipped across
the crowd in front of us to show us a different route and
told us useful things- we were fresh I had explained-
and we carefully avoided police but there weren't many.
It was cold. Not the orange man. Somehow we
met my friend's friends and we started a chant
in the crowd below us, perched atop a crumbling
history of a church. Pictures were taken. Instagram.
We dabbed to the beat of Hindu chanting and tambourines.
Muslims prayed towards Mecca beneath Christian statues.
Amazed. I felt a certain emptiness.
Then my friend joked,
'I'll make a social justice warrior out of you too!'
Why am I not angry? The orange man is wrong.
A fool, a jester. Yet our testicles are in his hands.
Sometimes, rarely, I feel a meager sad frightening pressure
between my legs. Some have already been castrated
in confused airports. Accidents of birth have left them
stranded in a great barren womb of this world. What
is a state? A foreign policy? Man? Woman? Child?
How much time do I have left to ***? On whose
face can I do it on? Is the orange man aiming for
mine? Ours? The veiled woman? Is the immigration
counter camera pornographic? What awkward things
to do with one's time. One's body. One's mind.
One's heart.
I am ashamed.
Instead of working, I am thinking. I am lazy.
I spend scholarship money in restaurants
away from the college dining hall so that the noise
around me will be something I cannot recognize.
Still both are the same bubbles of safety. Different
stages of cocooning is all. I am a caterpillar surrounded
by butterflies eating steak and salmon. I am ugly. So ugly.
Nothing beautiful at all.