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Tonglen
Breathing in Detention
This older woman, long skirt, practical sandals, a
professor
with benefits and theories, tries to convince me to
inhale suffering,
take in the mold trapped in the brick walls, scowls from
faces
that insist that I will tell their secrets to parole
officer, attorney
or psychiatric evaluator who could give a damn about a
single
brown, poor or young face inside this brick and locked
doors.
I try to explain to her how my shoulders immediately
slump
into a smattering of bones jumbled under my skin, and
the knots
that pile up where my neck meets my shoulders when the
door
clicks its final grimace into the lock. The lights dim
as I head toward classrooms guarded on all four corners.
She does not see the translucent paper of my lungs
growing heavy
with mucus in this place, or the cavities of my head
congested
with toxins oozing from skin, mildew, dripping sewage.
The trapped feeling reminds me that I can go home in a
few hours.
This is just a job, just a place that warehouses young
bodies before
they graduate to penitentiary. Some days, you breathe
deeply and watch
the dangers race toward your nostrils like refugees from
Pandora’s Box,
springy, hairy with bulging eyes and charging to
overtake me
in a slow, inevitable implosion. I wonder where they
might
leak out of this sorry sack of bones. They giggle upon
exit toward new hosts.
I’m lying on the crumbled corners of water-damaged
linoleum,
deflated, hearing the march of sneakered feet unlaced
tromping
in lines around the regimented square of hallway. All
the morning
faces I saw are still accounted for there, before I
depleted
sips of air that spraying sage and peppermint oil in
water permits.
Slow Dance
after Kerry James Marshall
Light the candle that corks a red/black bottle.
Then prayers bend through speakerbox.
Wisp notes snake through vintage quiet storms
at the midnight hour when Elleggua’s eyes smile
towards a gold Venus. I tell gods from every corner
about my plans.
This rumpled offering of me in pants worn for days
and sweaty sleeveless undershirt and a worn copy
of last month’s Ebony magazine can’t cover deliberate
etchings of Erzulie’s heart on my yellow table.
I lay out a plate of asparagus drizzled with honey
Kneel on a rug ringed with Oya’s rainbow petticoats.
Her knock at the door swings an adrenaline
hammer through my chest when I see her hair
folded over an eye after I tried to picture it alone.
Now, Betty’s dress, a sliver of banana peel firm
below the sweetest closed doors of her wide open eyes.
She wonders what conjured her back.
She thinks it’s the pale rouge of roses riddling
the air. She never assumes I was more desperate
than a man escaping crucifixion or I begged powers
older than Jesus. No head of hers leans
into the niche of my collarbone without help.
Other
People Like Me
First she’s saying GD or Til The World Blow Up?
The question loud enough to provoke looks
as the tin of the bus doors folds and closes.
She’s looking at her friend with meticulous braids
no wider than corn tassels cultivated across her scalp.
These sisters got thighs and hips filling seats
like Sunday buffets. They are an overflow of damn
and she-ain’t-even-grown-yet. The girl is no exception.
She never looks up at me, a could be cousin.
Her dry hair broken at odd lengths
and escaping her pinch of ponytail spiking
up without drawing her attention.
The two girls loudtalk each other over passengers
between them--who got beat down and crisp peach
and blue stripes of a boy’s button-up when he gets
on the bus. Pinch of ponytail notices the shirt.
She’s said nigger at least five times in cluster
of faces like hers. Lips straighten without
soapboxing and start counting streets
to Kedzie clipping west.
The braided friend begins Don’t say the n-word.
That’s what looks at me other people call us.
Suddenly, paler, hair too straight to need a perm,
not thick enough and carrying too many books,
in one glance, I become other again. |
