In Syrup

the day he traveled to my daughter's house
it was june. he cursed me with his morning nod
of anger as he filtered his callous
walk. skip. hop. feet slipshod
from 125th street bars, face curled with odd
reflections. the skin of a father is accented
in the sentence of the unaccented.


~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

If time is an arrow, what is its target

If a Flexible Flyer is the sled I had as a child, when may I become a child again

Do you need help digging the potatoes out of your garden of insults

Do you plan to vote in the next election

Is our country headed in the right direction or the wrong direction
and what did the bulldozer tell the yellow helmet’s ear

Which part of your body is like biting into a ripe peach
which part shames you like a rotten banana

(JUTLAND)

1916 Not in the thick of the fight,
Not in the press of the odds,
Do the heroes come to their height,
Or we know the demi-gods.

The gaunt thing
with no organs
creeps along the streets
of Europe, she will
commute, in her feathered bat stomach-gown
with no organs
with sores on her insides
even her head

1
Meryon saw it coming (who was he?):
No people, so no noise. As it should be.
The Bridge. The Morgue. Ghostly round his bed
Antipodean atolls and tattoos had fluted,

Volcanoes puffed. Then borborygmic sea
Forked, at its last gasp, into a V:
Down that black gallery and backward slid

Purple as tulips in May, mauve
into lush velvet, purple
as the stain blackberries leave
on the lips, on the hands,
the purple of ripe grapes
sunlit and warm as flesh.

Every day I will give you a color,
like a new flower in a bud vase

Hard Rock / was / “known not to take no shit
From nobody,” and he had the scars to prove it:
Split purple lips, lumbed ears, welts above
His yellow eyes, and one long scar that cut
Across his temple and plowed through a thick
Canopy of kinky hair.

The WORD / was / that Hard Rock wasn’t a mean nigger
Anymore, that the doctors had bored a hole in his head,

August, goldenrod blowing. We walk
into the graveyard, to find
my grandfather’s grave. Ten years ago
I came here last, bringing
marigolds from the round garden
outside the kitchen.
I didn’t know you then.
We walk

Washing Kai in the sauna,
The kerosene lantern set on a box
outside the ground-level window,
Lights up the edge of the iron stove and the
washtub down on the slab
Steaming air and crackle of waterdrops
brushed by on the pile of rocks on top
He stands in warm water