Oh ye slaveholders,
hesitant emancipators
and empire builders run manifest -
time will have its way.

Grain by grain,
nose by nose,
eye by eye,
you will return to stone - inpressed.

A monumental hypocrisy
blown into a mountain
will no longer preside
over ponderosa pine
and in that place, once corrupted,
the granites will prove this vanity.

In another age, perhaps
some distant race, chiselled, inflected
but unknowing shall squint upon these
weathered myths and wonder,

as we look upon the Sphinx
and so wonder -
why these haunches,
why this withered broken face,
staring blankly into sand.

She hates mushrooms
says they smell like dirt
and grow on **** and darkness

She hates green beans
because her thumbs still ache
from seven summers
snapping tips

She hates kale
because she don't wanna
chew for days
and her jaw clicks

She loves onions and garlic
the baseline
of everything going right

She loves the sweeter cabbages
melted down in bacon fat
topped with snap peas and walnuts

She'll cook for anybody
willing to listen
to her sizzling grease

She'll caramelize your mind
question every savory intention
every bitter herb in your teeth
salt every wound till it sweats
and goes limp in the pan

She travels with her tongue
her pantry her passport:
cumin, coriander, cinnamon,
cilantro and cardamom
in simmering stews of goat
and collard greens.

Her knife has a keen edge
and she cracks the joints of dead birds
like splitting cheap bamboo chopsticks.

Her eyes go wide and silent
at the range
and when the burners fire
the whole world gathers and waits.

Dogfish bait and a late teasing wind
slacks the line, the one binding
monofilament of time
and lost momentum
sagged from a raft adrift -
waiting -
and never enough
to sum the formulae,
the vagaries,
vicissitudes,
uncoiling from the reel
set with loose drag.

A stag in the sea still drowns,
still thrashes until the rack
goes down
one
last
time
one
last
breath
before the flounder is spitting
hair and bone
and the titanic hulk
becomes the soft stuff
of mollusks.

He seemed modest
until he ran a zip line
between the cell tower
and the high tension
wire.

Dirt don't call the lightning
blue or femoral.
In a furious upstroke
my mushroomed spine
explodes in the crown,
splinters of bone
and black lit pumas.
Driven to hell
through a straw
and all the trees
are dead on the road.
My dry lip
adheres to a dry gum
and my teeth are broke
and purple.
The lyrics are garbled
and tongue-spoke.
Guttural curses
cling to my head,
both hands holding
back the temples
of past myths,
lies and discontents.

Marriage of heaven and earth -
strike down, down, down,
that I may shut you up.