The Best American Poetry 2014 (10 page)

A shirt my mother gave me settles into my chest.

I should say
onto my chest
, but I am self-conscious—

the way the men watch me while I move toward them

makes my heart trip and slide and threaten to bruise

so that, inside my chest, I feel the pressure of her body,

her mother's breasts, her mother's mother's big, loving bounty.

I wear my daughter the way women other places are taught

to wear their young. Sometimes, when people smile,

I wonder if they think I am being quaintly primitive.

The cloth I wrap her in is brightly patterned, African,

and the baby's hair manes her alert head in such a way

she has often been compared to an animal.

There is a stroller in the garage, but I don't want to be taken

as my own child's nanny. (Half the time I know my fears are mine alone.)

At my shower, a Cameroonian woman helped me practice

putting a toy baby on my back. I stood in the middle of a circle

of women, stooped over and fumbling with the cloth. Curious George

was the only doll on hand, so the white women looked away

afraid I would hurt my baby while the black women looked away

and thought about not thinking about monkeys.

There is so much time in the world. How many ways can it be divided?

I walk every day with my daughter and wonder

what is happening in other people's minds. Half the time

I am filled with terror. Half the time I am full of myself.

The baby is sleeping on my back again. When I stand still,

I can feel her breathing. But when I start to move, I lose her

in the rhythms of my tread.

from
The American Poetry Review

What did you hear

That got you talking raw?

You got that low cloud look,

Got that heart-nicked stare.

Like the flora got voted

From under your feet.

Like someone told you a story,

Maybe the wrong story,

Palm trees where there should

Be pine. And now you doubt

Everything. Don't you hate

Doubting everything? There's

An unease the body radiates

When it can't put a finger

On a lie. You got that pickle

Wince, my friend,

You look like

You lost the directions

To where you from.

from
Terminus Magazine

But I was never the light of my father's eyes, nor any

well-lit brother's (that deep-husked choir), so there

was no height from which to fall. I began here

in the proverbial bottom:

undertow, base from which one may rise but briefly,

like the failing horse knowing it must now race, must

tear out of its rusted gate, must further tear

the pleurisied lining of its lungs, let its tongue loll

ugly from the side

of its mouth. Have you seen such a thing?

Its brown coat salted with sweat as it lunges

forward and lunges again, forcing its measure

not up but out, knowing its ankles could fold

under such weight, its nose opened

into another being, sucking and snorting

the only thing it takes within that does not judge it,

the air. The sweet, sweet air

as it makes its way around a curve that might kill it,

that assuredly will kill it. Do you see me there?

Of course not.

I'm over here. Here,

in
this
hollow running for my low life. O Father,

for the rub of a hand over my back. O Brothers,

for the gold leaf wreath that might have meant

a stroke of my calf, for that, I stretch these legs to breaking,

I wrench this belly's hull, dark

as all alluvial things are. Lucifer's is a common story, a

child's bogeyman. What should frighten
you
is this:

Imagine what he would be had he not fallen, had he never

known the elusive light at all,
never
been privy to the cords

of God's neck, if he in fact doubted such things,

believing only in what anguishes and writhes, trusting

nothing more than what soils his hands.

from
Prairie Schooner

Tumbling through the

city in my

mind without once

looking up

the racket in

the lugwork probably

rehearsing some

stupid thing I

said or did

some crime or

other the city they

say is a lonely

place until yes

the sound of sweeping

and a woman

yes with a

broom beneath

which you are now

too the canopy

of a fig its

arms pulling the

September sun to it

and she

has a hose too

and so works hard

rinsing and scrubbing

the walk

lest some poor sod

slip on the

silk of a fig

and break his hip

and not probably

reach over to gobble up

the perpetrator

the light catches

the veins in her hands

when I ask about

the tree they

flutter in the air and

she says take

as much as

you can

help me

so I load my

pockets and mouth

and she points

to the stepladder against

the wall to

mean more but

I was without a

sack so my meager

plunder would have to

suffice and an old woman

whom gravity

was pulling into

the earth loosed one

from a low slung

branch and its eye

wept like hers

which she dabbed

with a kerchief as she

cleaved the fig with

what remained of her

teeth and soon there were

eight or nine

people gathered beneath

the tree looking into

it like a

constellation pointing

do you see it

and I am tall and so

good for these things

and a bald man even

told me so

when I grabbed three

or four for

him reaching into the

giddy throngs of

yellow jackets sugar

stoned which he only

pointed to smiling and

rubbing his stomach

I mean he was really rubbing his stomach

like there was a baby

in there

it was hot his

head shone while he

offered recipes to the

group using words which

I couldn't understand and besides

I was a little

tipsy on the dance

of the velvety heart rolling

in my mouth

pulling me down and

down into the

oldest countries of my

body where I ate my first fig

from the hand of a man who escaped his country

by swimming through the night

and maybe

never said more than

five words to me

at once but gave me

figs and a man on his way

to work hops twice

to reach at last his

fig which he smiles at and calls

baby,
c'mere baby
,

he says and blows a kiss

to the tree which everyone knows

cannot grow this far north

being Mediterranean

and favoring the rocky, sun-baked soils

of Jordan and Sicily

but no one told the fig tree

or the immigrants

there is a way

the fig tree grows

in groves it wants,

it seems, to hold us,

yes I am anthropomorphizing

goddammit I have twice

in the last thirty seconds

rubbed my sweaty

forearm into someone else's

sweaty shoulder

gleeful eating out of each other's hands

on Christian St.

in Philadelphia a city like most

which has murdered its own

people

this is true

we are feeding each other

from a tree

at the corner of Christian and 9th

strangers maybe

never again.

from
The American Poetry Review

“Monk's Mood” [false start]

I had gotten off the bus too soon for my stop and so I had to walk a few

blocks in order to gain my bearings. Thelonious Monk said, “It's always night/ or we

wouldn't need light.” I read this in an essay. I wanted to have a conversation

with someone to lighten my load. I remember seeing a woman disembarking from the next

bus. Our gazes locked for a long second. [
It is always night wherever you go.
]

“Crepuscule with Nellie” [breakdown]

[
Monk continues alone and quiet
.] Northward leads to the river southward back to my hotel

room. An entire week had gone by and I hadn't exchanged seven words with another

human. The sound of words directed at me would feel like a hand on my shoulder, an arm

brushing against my skin. It is always night when silence overcomes me, silence opening up

within me like a wound. Black keys, I've been told, have an ominous, mysterious sound.

“Misterioso”

[
Monk conversing with water
.] What we end up making, whether it's something we do by

ourselves or with others is always a form of conversation. My presence is solid, but

others see me as a fishing weir, a foamless Mister So-

and-So, a scavenger for anything that would flatter his eyes. What I want is a garden that will not perish, a bed of imperial, white peonies.

from
Tongue