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Hurricanes, 2005 Arlene learned to dance backwards in heels that were too high. Bret prayed for a shaggy mustache made of mud and hair. Cindy just couldn’t keep her windy legs together. Dennis never learned to swim. Emily whispered her gusts into a thousand skins. Franklin, farsighted and anxious, bumbled villages. Gert spat her matronly name against a city’s flat face. Harvey hurled a wailing child high. Irene, the baby girl, threw pounding tantrums. José liked the whip sound of slapping. Lee just craved the whip. Maria’s thunder skirts flew high when she danced. Nate was mannered and practical. He stormed precisely. Ophelia nibbled weirdly on the tips of depressions. Philippe slept too late, flailing on a wronged ocean. Rita was a vicious flirt. She woke Philippe with rumors. Stan was born business, a gobbler of steel. Tammy crooned country, getting the words all wrong. Vince died before anyone could remember his name. Wilma opened her maw wide, flashing rot. None of them talked about Katrina. She was their odd sister, the blood dazzler.

O Rose thou art sick. The invisible worm, That flies in the night In the howling storm: Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy: And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy.

the froth of noise the undersides of the cedars make, the windblown dark that hints and fails for hours at effacement— maybe I could claim it isn’t praying, but it’s asking, at the least, begging that these lungfuls of this blackness eat whatever keeps on swelling and collapsing in my chest, and be done with it, no more noise left hanging in the spaces between brake lights than a smothered rush that sounds like suffering and is nothing. Instead a sobbing isn’t so much easing from my throat as shining like black light from my torso, veining the leaves of weeds, stoning the whole roadside in a halo—I can feel the heat of truck lights on my back, I’m inside that brilliant gravity, I think of time, I’m in the driver’s nightmare and it shudders by—

There were two voices in the fever dream: Hers speaking from another room, and theirs, The teeny-boppers, singing from the screen. Hers spoke a litany of grievous thanks, And thankful worries, who did what to whom, And why, and thank God it wasn’t worse, poor bastard, Poor thing, while theirs kept singing who wears short Shorts, we wear short shorts, over and over Till I was singing too. Someone, thank God, at last, Was out of it, and some one else, thank God, Had only lost a breast, and Shirley what A good kid, what a beauty, what a doll, She let herself go when the bum walked out. Thank God they never had a child. Thank God They smelled the smoke; they found the keys, the dog; Thank God they all wore short shorts as they sang To me on little stages on the stage Where boys and girls were dancing all around them, Singing and dancing where it wasn’t worse, Thank God, and, thank God, no one paused to wonder Who to thank for just how bad it was.

I try to carry the gravestone from the darkness of my mother's sickroom— scratches of light around drawn shades— outside, the gold and red of autumn. She is like a queen in exile scraping with her nails on silk walls her message of anger, her weak insatiable demands and regrets. I want her to grow rosy old like a maple leaf, ripening, yielding only to that ice edged wind that must come and cut her down—like me, like everyone.

On the warm Sunday afternoons And every evening in the Spring and Summer When the night hurries the late home-corner And the air grows softer, and scraps of tunes Float from the open windows and jar Against the voices of children and the hum of a car; When the city noises commingle and melt With a restless something half-seen, half-felt— I see them always there, Upon the low, smooth wall before the church; That row of little girls who sit and stare Like sparrows on a granite perch. They come in twittering couples or walk alone To their gray bough of stone, Sometimes by twos and threes, sometimes as many as five— But always they sit there on the narrow coping Bright-eyed and solemn, scarcely hoping To see more than what is merely moving and alive. . . They hear the couples pass; the lisp of happy feet Increases and the night grows suddenly sweet. . . Before the quiet church that smells of death They sit. And Life sweeps past them with a rushing breath And reaches out and plucks them by the hand And calls them boldly, whispering to each In some strange speech They tremble to but cannot understand. It thrills and troubles them, as one by one, The days run off like water through a sieve; While, with a gaze as candid as the sun, Poignant and puzzled and inquisitive, They come and sit,— A part of life and yet apart from it.

Have I spent too much time worrying about the boys killing each other to pray for the ones who do it with their own hands? Is that not black on black violence? Is that not a mother who has to bury her boy? Is it not the same play? The same plot & characters? The curtain rises, then: a womb a boy a night emptied of music a trigger a finger a bullet then: lights. It always drives the crowd to their feet. An encore of boy after boy after sweet boy            — their endless, bloody bow. They throw dirt on the actors like roses until the boys are drowned by the earth & the audience doesn’t remember what they’re standing for.

I The sidewalks were long where I grew up. They were as veined as the backs Of my Grandma’s hands. We knew every inch of pavement; We jumped the cracks Chanting rhymes that broke evil spirits, Played tag at sunset Among the fireflies and sweet maple trees Or sang wishful sonnets about boyfriends To the tune of whipping jump ropes. The sidewalks wrapped around corners Like dirty ribbons lacing the old houses Together in tight knots; Maple trees bordered The all-white cemetery. Sometimes we’d watch Priscilla’s uncle Sway down the dirt alley towards home. We called her Pussy, called him Crazy Max. He was feebleminded and took to fits, Barely making it from alley to pavement, Loping down the street like a drunk. We paced his jagged walk Against tumbling tunes, Taunting each pigeon-toed footstep With rhyme. The boys      bolder, louder The girls       tagging along Braids flopping like twisted hemp, Ending in brightly colored ribbons. We turned our black faces into silence When he finally made it home; Watched him grope up the broken concrete stairs, Clutch the wooden railing, Lunge for the broken screen door And his medicine. His tongue flopped wildly, Parrot noises drowning his sister’s cries As she rushed from the black pit Of their house. One day, he leaned away from the safe umbrella Of his sister’s voice; Leaned into the sky, Hanging on the porch rail like a rag doll, Then fell into the cracks of the sidewalk. We rarely chanted after that, Always passed Pussy’s house in silence. Sometimes I’d sit in the sweet stillness Of Grandma’s moldy basement And draw his outline on the wet fuzzy walls. The grey concrete backdropped my stick figure As it fell into nothingness. II Bumpsy played the Dirty Dozens As we jackknifed the length of the block, Forcing grown-ups off the street. We linked arms like soldiers, Our black legs scissoring in precision. One’s a company, two’s a crowd Three on the sidewalk is not allowed— Last night, the night before Twenty-four robbers at my door— Po-lice, po-lice, do your duty Make this boy stop feeling my booty— Mary, Mary, tell me true Who is the one you love? Tin soldiers, wooden guns, and sharp tongues. We got comic books for the price of one In blitz attacks at Old Man Farrow’s dirty store. Garages were secret places for dirty jokes, Our folks couldn’t afford cars. When we got older, we played house for real Until we found Terry’s baby sister’s body Behind a stack of tires; The melodies we’d sung still seemed to bounce Off the dirty walls and stacks of comic books. III Our houses ended at the sidewalk, Whitewashed steps gleaming like teeth Against the blocks of grey pavement. We walked three blocks just to find A vacant lot to feed Mildred’s thirst For green grass. Fat Vaughn could eat a whole sheet Of newspaper in less than three minutes. Once, I licked the damp cellar wall, But the taste didn’t match the sweet smell. Ten years later, I searched through Grandma’s Things before they were sold for auction. I found her picture, three comics and the wind-up Victrola we had used to put on our version Of Cotton Club musicals. We traded days so we could all be stars; The rest sang chorus until the Victrola Ran out of steam, the record moaning Like a sick calf. I found the stack of old pillows We collapsed on, giggling and tumbling Against each other like puppies, While the needle stuck in one groove Cutting circles in the records.

Some people might describe this room as spare: a bedside table and an ashtray and an antique chair; a mattress and a coffee mug; an unwashed cotton blanket and a rug my mother used to own. I used to have a phone. I used to have another room, a bigger broom, a wetter sponge. I used to water my bouquet of paper clips and empty pens, of things I thought I’d want to say if given chance; but now, to live, to sit somehow, to watch a particle of thought dote on the dust and dwindle in a little grid of shadow on the sunset’s patchy rust seems like enough.

Go north a dozen years on a road overgrown with vines to find the days after you were born. Flowers remembered their colors and trees were frothy and the hospital was behind us now, its brick indifference forgotten by our car mirrors. You were revealed to me: tiny, delicate, your head smelling of some other world. Turn right after the circular room where I kept my books and right again past the crib where you did not sleep and you will find the window where I held you that June morning when you opened your eyes. They were blue, tentative, not the deep chocolate they would later become. You were gazing into the world: at our walls, my red cup, my sleepless hair and though I'm told you could not focus, and you no longer remember, we were seeing one another after seasons of darkness.