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A clementine Of inclement climate Grows tart. A crocus Too stoic to open, Won’t. Like an oyster That cloisters a spoil of pearls, Untouched— The heart that’s had Enough Stays shut.

This isn’t a great poem. I’m not writing this to write a great poem. I am writing this because I am one person. I am only one. I have a face and a front of my face. I have two shoulders and two hips. I’m living. I live. So what can I do with my face if it can’t see that person’s face? What do I tell my eyes to see? How do I let them know that when they see that face it is that person’s wish that they not know it? How do I tell them we have to go back into the world where no one knows us and we don’t know anyone? How do I tell them to stay there? There is nothing for them to see. How do I tell my hands they will never touch that person’s hands? How do I tell my ears that when that person says my name it is only a word? How do I tell my lips to make that person’s name another word so I can say it? How do I tell my neck that person cannot see it? How do I tell my hair that person cannot pull it? It is my hair. It is my head. How do I tell my teeth they will never strike that person’s teeth? How do I tell my thighs it does not matter what they do? They are the tops of my legs. They will fall apart. How do I tell my back it must never wait for that person? That person will not hold me. That person does not know where I am, does not think of me. Does not know I have exhausted every argument against him. That person does not know I no longer love freedom. That person does not know what it means when I ask for forgiveness. That person does not know I beg the world to let me change. That person cannot see my face. Knows a woman with my name and she is a woman. Does not know the word I hide behind my words. Does not know this face. Does not know this is my face. Says my name and looks at this person. How do I tell my feet to stand here? How do I tell my eyes to see? How do I tell the voice under my voice to keep on speaking? How do I tell my mouth to speak?

If you can make a poem a farmer finds useful, you should be happy. A blacksmith you can never figure out. The worst to please is a carpenter.

Handsome, like those foam-topped tidal waves breaking high, in little crystal globes. Handsome, like the breeze that lifts a little tuft of tulle. If tulle were life. Handsome, like a frozen face, tear-tracked, when the sun hammers down. Handsome. Like fire. Handsome, like the bottomless sky, with that one proud penetrating star. But handsome, too, like a sky that’s an arching ocean, and an earth prone as an ocean’s floor. Handsome ocean-sky, and earth-sea floor. The big question is: where’s the man in a scene like this? Handsome: the man asleep. And the night sky swarms, tropic and wide. Handsome, in some ornamental, muggy midnight caught between cat’s paws. Sharp-nailed: they prick. Handsome: the firefly swarms around you. Handsome, like a soap bubble grazing a little black dress. Like a soap-bubble pricked with a pin. Handsomeness a rainbow, a rainbow an arrow, an arrow in my chest. Handsome, like shadows slow-rolling on a Japanese screen. Handsome motion. Handsome as life and poison. Sun-blood handsome. Bleeding sun. Translated from the French by Robert Archambeau

When the rain hits the snake in the head, he closes his eyes and wishes he were asleep in a tire on the side of the road, so young boys could roll him over, forever.

For js You were laughing no you weren't she was she was she wasn't These aren't the right words The people are waiting on the platform and the decisions are being themselves as usual You could take this silver cord and wrap it around all of your ideas You could you could What is the way to make meaning You're less busy than the machine has time for I poured the world in for you All the sun on that block Or at least I wanted to: Everyone is leaving but this would be an arrival your torso is a drum people come through and then they die you see the obituary in passing as the man next to you folds the paper and all these people at all these parties that cannot be the answer but what Back above ground and it's the same sun different block same world different world Your friend is lying down with the thing he is carrying Everybody is somebody's family you think you forget the sun keeps going still you keep going the world rearranges itself just so False alarm you say and then you don't know what to say you wrap yourself in the future you wrap yourself in the past the woman gets in the taxi just in time Everybody is it's not an easy thing to understand False alarm you say and then you don't know what to say the sun keeps  going.

for years the scenes bustled through him as he dreamed he was alive. then he felt real, and slammed awake in the wet sheets screaming too fast, everything moves too fast, and the edges of things are gone.

A few years back and they told me Black means a hole where other folks got brain/it was like the cells in the heads of Black children was out to every hour on the hour naps Scientists called the phenomenon the Notorious Jensen Lapse, remember? Anyway I was thinking about how to devise a test for the wise like a Stanford-Binet for the C.I.A. you know? Take Einstein being the most the unquestionable the outstanding the maximal mind of the century right? And I’m struggling against this lapse leftover from my Black childhood to fathom why anybody should say so: E=mc squared? I try that on this old lady live on my block: She sweeping away Saturday night from the stoop and mad as can be because some absolute jackass have left a kingsize mattress where she have to sweep around it stains and all she don’t want to know nothing about in the first place “Mrs. Johnson!” I say, leaning on the gate between us: “What you think about somebody come up with an E equals M C 2?” “How you doin,” she answer me, sideways, like she don’t want to let on she know I ain’ combed my hair yet and here it is Sunday morning but still I have the nerve to be bothering serious work with these crazy questions about “E equals what you say again, dear?” Then I tell her, “Well also this same guy? I think he was undisputed Father of the Atom Bomb!” “That right.” She mumbles or grumbles, not too politely “And dint remember to wear socks when he put on his shoes!” I add on (getting desperate) at which point Mrs. Johnson take herself and her broom a very big step down the stoop away from me “And never did nothing for nobody in particular lessen it was a committee and used to say, ‘What time is it?’ and you’d say, ‘Six o’clock.’ and he’d say, ‘Day or night?’ and and he never made nobody a cup a tea in his whole brilliant life! and [my voice rises slightly] and he dint never boogie neither: never!” “Well,” say Mrs. Johnson, “Well, honey, I do guess that’s genius for you.”

Even tonight and I need to take a walk and clear my head about this poem about why I can’t go out without changing my clothes my shoes my body posture my gender identity my age my status as a woman alone in the evening/ alone on the streets/alone not being the point/ the point being that I can’t do what I want to do with my own body because I am the wrong sex the wrong age the wrong skin and suppose it was not here in the city but down on the beach/ or far into the woods and I wanted to go there by myself thinking about God/or thinking about children or thinking about the world/all of it disclosed by the stars and the silence: I could not go and I could not think and I could not stay there alone as I need to be alone because I can’t do what I want to do with my own body and who in the hell set things up like this and in France they say if the guy penetrates but does not ejaculate then he did not rape me and if after stabbing him if after screams if after begging the bastard and if even after smashing a hammer to his head if even after that if he and his buddies fuck me after that then I consented and there was no rape because finally you understand finally they fucked me over because I was wrong I was wrong again to be me being me where I was/wrong to be who I am which is exactly like South Africa penetrating into Namibia penetrating into Angola and does that mean I mean how do you know if Pretoria ejaculates what will the evidence look like the proof of the monster jackboot ejaculation on Blackland and if after Namibia and if after Angola and if after Zimbabwe and if after all of my kinsmen and women resist even to self-immolation of the villages and if after that we lose nevertheless what will the big boys say will they claim my consent: Do You Follow Me: We are the wrong people of the wrong skin on the wrong continent and what in the hell is everybody being reasonable about and according to the Times this week back in 1966 the C.I.A. decided that they had this problem and the problem was a man named Nkrumah so they killed him and before that it was Patrice Lumumba and before that it was my father on the campus of my Ivy League school and my father afraid to walk into the cafeteria because he said he was wrong the wrong age the wrong skin the wrong gender identity and he was paying my tuition and before that it was my father saying I was wrong saying that I should have been a boy because he wanted one/a boy and that I should have been lighter skinned and that I should have had straighter hair and that I should not be so boy crazy but instead I should just be one/a boy and before that it was my mother pleading plastic surgery for my nose and braces for my teeth and telling me to let the books loose to let them loose in other words I am very familiar with the problems of the C.I.A. and the problems of South Africa and the problems of Exxon Corporation and the problems of white America in general and the problems of the teachers and the preachers and the F.B.I. and the social workers and my particular Mom and Dad/I am very familiar with the problems because the problems turn out to be me I am the history of rape I am the history of the rejection of who I am I am the history of the terrorized incarceration of myself I am the history of battery assault and limitless armies against whatever I want to do with my mind and my body and my soul and whether it’s about walking out at night or whether it’s about the love that I feel or whether it’s about the sanctity of my vagina or the sanctity of my national boundaries or the sanctity of my leaders or the sanctity of each and every desire that I know from my personal and idiosyncratic and indisputably single and singular heart I have been raped be- cause I have been wrong the wrong sex the wrong age the wrong skin the wrong nose the wrong hair the wrong need the wrong dream the wrong geographic the wrong sartorial I I have been the meaning of rape I have been the problem everyone seeks to eliminate by forced penetration with or without the evidence of slime and/ but let this be unmistakable this poem is not consent I do not consent to my mother to my father to the teachers to the F.B.I. to South Africa to Bedford-Stuy to Park Avenue to American Airlines to the hardon idlers on the corners to the sneaky creeps in cars I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name My name is my own my own my own and I can’t tell you who the hell set things up like this but I can tell you that from now on my resistance my simple and daily and nightly self-determination may very well cost you your life

I can feel myself slipping away, fading away, withdrawing from this life, just as my father did. When the pain you're in is so great you can’t think about or pay attention to anything but your own pain, the rest of the world and all other life don't matter. I think about my friends with dementia, cancer, arthritis, and how much more pain they are in than I am, but it does no good, their pain is not mine, and therefore, no matter how magnanimous I might want to be, their pain is not as important to me as my own.