A hand on a throat, where if all fingers touch, the throat
turns to ash. The villain of an anime I now watch
clutches the hero with his middle-finger aired
before the vital moment. I jump
on holiday off a cliff
and my chest stumbles with simulations. My body angled
poorly as I could slap headfirst. I was warned that my feet
should sink first if I merely fall. If I dive, my fingers
should first touch the water. I am depressed
the months before. College student, America. So far off, so cold
from the landlock of my birth. And the summer
study-abroad, double-abroad. In Italy
I was watching the Creation show itself on old ceilings
in marble-rooms, looking for some culture
that might have been ours if not for the pillagings that brought
gold and bodies to shape that gold into buildings like this. So I jump
and fall. And shiver emptily. It is the same feeling as the nights
on the bed thinking of futures without this self. Thinking as if
I did not exist. Ignored emails from therapists. And here this
feeling!: it made me want to live. So I jump again
on the higher ledge. My friend afterwards asks if I'm okay.
I'm shaking slightly. I'm without words. I laugh
with the same absence as any birth. A baby's confused cry
without tears. A long way down. What blue-green water,
as if dug for in the earth and sold for courtyard dances.
It glimmers all over my body, frizzes
up my hair as my ****** curls soak it, squeezes it down my face,
down towards my neck like fingers.
The villain walks away. The next time the hero sees him
he should be careful. He will have decided to **** me by then.

We're still bothered by our births. So, science.
Leaving college English classes horrified at answerlessness.
Calculate me.
Here's some simple answer on a once clean page.
Blank slate, painted with the codes of all
life, thought; numbers.
Before sleeping, once more a wound appears with a roar,
the sort of roar of the wings of an ant:
bright particles shoot through a double slit
and our comfort is misunderstood as the pattern
on the wall behind in front of us.

.              how disapproving. to hear chords as yours,
I thought how clean as a viola;
               well, then as smooth as looking through a person.
I thought this blackness was opaque.
               so why sunlight through my ears when I hear
your ******* like water through a straw:
               notice: in my country, drought-heavy
cow-full, dust-bowled, bare-footed, large-
               accented-- skinny-boyed, big-thighed sauntering
girls-- what words: girls, boys-- notice:
               in my country water is desperate and
mottoed. we sing for it as god. when it
               rains mothers cry. your ******* is a waste
of water and a waste of my skin. transparent.

(o lightskins!: post-colonial nymph-paragoned
sibylline demigoded golden Greek-statued heroes--
               how full of **** y'all are!

and I Hephaestus...)

A road runs down Harvard called Massachusetts Avenue as if
we own the whole state. Because we do. We took the land
from its people. Violently. And who is we? Ambulances
burn red nightly-casual outside the window of this pale yellow
building opposite the smaller university hospital. The red
reminds me of a different kind of burning. Of bodies.
Wonderful cremations of us down that tree over there next
to the libraries that now belong to us. And who is us?
I am reminded of the burning because the red is part
of the white and the blue and the sirens and the men
launching out of their cars with faces saying, in strange
tongues, strange indeed, And who
are you?

I am the expanse of purposeless selves before me,/
summated like the stickily-shaded colours under/
a calculus-course curve, whose trajectory marks me across one axis/
to the next, just as I am the small drops of cloud squashed/
into one another as an ocean I now glare at, whose sands/
meeting the horizon are later stewed into the clearer edges/
of a mirror so that this glare may continue. There was a myth of a man/
who projected himself into a pool of water until he thinned away/
into anorexias of young girls with camera phones pointed/
towards their white faces. Snakes eat their tales sometimes./
Narcisuss is a poet. White girls are poets. I've swallowed them all/
into my large black mouth. When I speak: soft-spoken integrations,/
meagre, selfless, hollow-- filled with stagnant historical airs formatted/
cleanly now on a word-processor-- while my hand reaches across my navel,/
bored, digging: then a birth there as my spine cracks across my bedsheets/
with my lamplight flickering as candles once did,/
and shadows wall-dancing with the idea of ancient meanings/
now lost but never once there, self-defining, self-signifying, self-pointing,/
self-shaking self-but-not-self./

How do the nights go? Chillin' down there with the white folk/
Ne'er be a token given I'm golden so I might just bolt:/
Usain; when I'm lazy talent swishes down the drain like bad milk/
Ain't cry o'er **** that I spilt, rose from the concrete ne'er wilt/

Narrowly lost my mind sometime ago in this flow/
like slave boats from the Gold Coast with wood creaking dream-songs of lost homes/
I was drowning in unconscious streams of different scenes of this mind's scenes/
I seen through the scenes of green trees turned to yellowing leaves.../

(for children)


(1)

I heard a big word once. 'Armamentarium'.
It's a word with old parents. It means things
like medicine and how doctors feel your chest
for beats that don't quite fit. It means red
and the things inside your body that need
hands to help you. My hands help by wandering.
I tap my hands on tables, I comb my hair,
I pick up flowers, I hold up faces
of people I love when I feel blue. But my favourite
is red, because it is inside me, beating.
I learned a big word once. It was my name. I said it and it sang.


(2)

If you peel me you will find songs
as thick as grapefruit. I am red inside.
I take some time. I am always late.
I am best in the mornings but at night awake.
I'm from a place that is not as green as here.
Our grasses are yellow and say so with the wind.
My mirror is both my best friend and enemy,
sometimes a lover, often a bully, either way
hands are caught. I like to read. I read
so much that I think of my skin as grapefruit.
I don't even like to eat it. I just like the red.


(3)

Planes have mouths. They swallow people.
They fly them away. They spit me out.
Sometimes I do not know whose stomach I am in.
Inside the planes I dream of reds as dense as
roses. When the planes land I give them to
me as myself. Let me explain this better:
my accent is a grand liar because my
country is blue. It never rains there
but when it does you will find my mother's throat.
I croak with such dryness that the sounds turn to words.


(4)

When I see me I see soil. I grow roses
in my skin. People who don't look like
me first brought those kinds of flowers
to my country with ships. Kind of. We do not have
oceans. They must have walked so far for me
to speak with things they then planted. People think of me
as oceans reflecting the sky. I say I want the sunset
petalled perfectly into soil. My skin. When you see me
you must adore me because of your planting. I am not
your garden. I bloom.


(5)

When you hear words do not forget that someone
taught them to you. Maybe your mother
who read books about cats in hats to you
at airports. Maybe your father
and his stories of his childhood with feet
twisting through thin sand as roses dancing.
Where I am from we do not have soil
for those kinds of flowers. My father still grew
and my mother still grew me. Peel my skin
and you will find that sort of red beneath. If you ask me
where it came from I won't say. I will sing.