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You have towered here leaning half over the wall all my awareness years before I knew what silkworm was or China I felt your berries pulp under my feet tracked your purple all over grandmother’s carpet a sapling planted by some sea captain to make shade for a future This winter you lost one of  your long low branches to a backed-up car and the old woman who has known you all her life wept at the split wood Your bark is wrinkled more deeply than any face you live so slowly do our voices sound to you like the fluttering of  paper moth wings do we seem rootless holding fast to the anchor of  the saddest things

they thought the field was wasting and so they gathered the marker rocks and stones and piled them into a barn    they say that the rocks were shaped some of them scratched with triangles and other forms    they must have been trying to invent some new language they say the rocks went to build that wall there guarding the manor and some few were used for the state house crops refused to grow i say the stones marked an old tongue and it was called eternity and pointed toward the river    i say that after that collection no pillow in the big house dreamed    i say that somewhere under here moulders one called alice whose great grandson is old now too and refuses to talk about slavery    i say that at the masters table only one plate is set for supper    i say no seed can flourish on this ground once planted then forsaken    wild berries warm a field of bones bloom how you must i say

with respect to Zora and the Ground of the African Church Sorrowtalked eye-to-eye forgiven is no mere burden. The one who sings is no mere beast. The one who slips the harness of the horror stands alive as earth. Today I can watch the wind and it is blue smoke. I shake myself inside my dress, consider rain and choose Shine. I was walking down Mississippi River Street and a ghost stopped me. No one could see it but me, standing in the middle of the sidewalk smilin at a haint with his hat in his hand instead of his head when he can tote that too. When one mule die the rest neigh-cry till the wagon take the dead thing away. Mississippi River Street rampant with noise, radiant, won’t hold still. But I have walked on blue black water. Watched dead rise before the wagon came. Everywhere I see mules, open mouths sing blues, then be human, then beyond. Funerals, weddings, baptisms I take off my skin, hang it up like a soaked quilt to dry the tears and sweat from feeling. I stand naked before Church, holding Dr. Watts closer than my sagging, girlish breasts. My soul wears no clothes when she sing. It is all being in love with more than one man who is one whole man you can look into his eyes without blinking. Where would I go to hide? Dr. Watts standing with my skin hooked on his finger and I am next to him solid and living the song with no words     . that every born-again mule knew in death and in life before birth, now hums true again hot in the chest and throat breaking natural out the mouth like breathing. Where would I go to hide? Sit down, rock my soul like my baby and Dr. Watts climb in my lap and moan for the milk no mother can buy or borrow only make in hearts of her eyes, in lines of the palms of her hands. And where would I find lines with no skin? Where would I go to hide? I tell you I am living now. Like in Mississippi Grandmama’s bedroom sitting on the high bed you could break your neck leaving. Cousin Chubby said fried fish, greens, and cornbread was good eatin. I am good livin. Blue smoke watching, naked, haint-smiling, entertaining Dr. Watts, dreaming of a man with a white liver who can’t kill me, who love mulish women, hainted ones, I am the sainted one naked with no sense of memory but good like God rocking hums in my lap and looking for no hiding place even if wind be blue smoke hurricane and I make red milk in the hearts of my eyes and reach out my lifelines to a hopeless haint I can stand myself. Naked now, where would I want to go to hide? From this funeral wedding death and birth baptism the sliding tears washing my soul cleaner than Dr. Watts’ whistle or the look in a sweatin man’s eyes when he lookin at a perfect, brutal sun killing him with living while he lick his lips and dream of water, then put his shoulder behind a woman guiding him while he dig in and groove the earth to the quick deep endless quick. Where would I go Where would I go to hide this yes-crying love yielding beyond flesh yet subsumed by sweat Where would I go naked so following blues and Dr. Watts like a double-seeing shadow standing before you with only blue smoke between us humming yes and yes and yes subsumed by sweat and yielding beyond mere flesh.

For ten years I would not say the name. I said: episode. Said: setback, incident, exacerbation—anything but be specific in the way this is specific, not a theory or description, but a diagnosis. I said: muscle, weakness, numbness, fatigue. I said vertigo, neuritis, lesion, spasm. Remission. Progression. Recurrence. Deficit. But the name, the ugly sound of it, I refused. There are two words. The last one means: scarring. It means what grows hard, and cannot be repaired. The first one means: repeating, or myriad, consisting of many parts, increasing in number, happening over and over, without end.

Ground zero refers to the detonation point Of a bomb of any size, from one strapped To the waist, to the Fat Man, to the Massive Ordinance Air Burst. Like the Daisy Cutter, The M.O.A.B. explodes just above the ashen clay To insure that it spreads its sentiment sideways.

Multiplying in a column M by F do we get one or two as a result? May the body stay glued to the soul, may the soul fear the body. Do I ask too much? I only wish the crucible of tenderness would melt memories, and I would sleep, my cheek pressed against your back, as on a motorbike

XXI Dynasty My body holds its shape. The genius is intact. Will I return to Thebes? In that lost country The eucalyptus trees have turned to stone. Once, branches nudged me, dropping swollen blossoms, And passionflowers lit my father’s garden. Is it still there, that place of mottled shadow, The scarlet flowers breathing in the darkness? I remember how I died. It was so simple! One morning the garden faded. My face blacked out. On my left side they made the first incision. They washed my heart and liver in palm wine— My lungs were two dark fruit they stuffed with spices. They smeared my innards with a sticky unguent And sealed them in a crock of alabaster. My brain was next. A pointed instrument Hooked it through my nostrils, strand by strand. A voice swayed over me. I paid no notice. For weeks my body swam in sweet perfume. I came out scoured. I was skin and bone. They lifted me into the sun again And packed my empty skull with cinnamon. They slit my toes; a razor gashed my fingertips. Stitched shut at last, my limbs were chaste and valuable, Stuffed with paste of cloves and wild honey. My eyes were empty, so they filled them up, Inserting little nuggets of obsidian. A basalt scarab wedged between my breasts Replaced the tinny music of my heart. Hands touched my sutures. I was so important! They oiled my pores, rubbing a fragrance in. An amber gum oozed down to soothe my temples. I wanted to sit up. My skin was luminous, Frail as the shadow of an emerald. Before I learned to love myself too much, My body wound itself in spools of linen. Shut in my painted box, I am a precious object. I wear a wooden mask. These are my eyelids, Two flakes of bronze, and here is my new mouth, Chiseled with care, guarding its ruby facets. I will last forever. I am not impatient— My skin will wait to greet its old complexions. I’ll lie here till the world swims back again. When I come home the garden will be budding, White petals breaking open, clusters of night flowers, The far-off music of a tambourine. A boy will pace among the passionflowers, His eyes no longer two bruised surfaces. I’ll know the mouth of my young groom, I’ll touch His hands. Why do people lie to one another?

Montana, you beat your fists against museum doors your bronze dress shimmering in the starless night. The doors are locked, Montana dreaming of snow-white mice cluttering the shelves in your kitchen, snow-white mice inside the oven, snow-white mice clogging your shiny aluminum sink, their corpses curled up like piles of fluffy cotton. Mosques are desecrated and altars overturned outside the museum's cool stone walls. Border skirmishes seen and heard in the distance, delicate bursts of poppy-red flames. The wars go on and on, invading your dreams. The mirror reflects a young man's body dangling from a rope and you gasp: "O, my brother—" The doctor finally lets you in, unlocking the door. Forbidden to touch you, he stares straight ahead, avoiding your curious glance. "You're partly Egyptian, aren't you?" The doctor inquires. You stalk the dark museum halls calling out the name of your dead lover, the name of a man unspoken since the siege of Troy. "How did you guess?" You growl, "Do you have to open graves to find girls to fall in love with?" The doctor smiles, averting his gaze from your ravaged face. He longs to trace your fish scale dress with his slender fingers. Montana scarlet shameless Montana, you stalk the dark museum halls in a rage. Ripping your satin gloves to shreds you pry open coffins; reading between the lines you decipher hieroglyphics on tombs. "Any message would do, you say, tiny jeweled tears permanently etched in the corners of your eyes. The doctor sighs, his impotence ancient as the curse that immortalizes him, the terrible secret that pursues you. Montana on the night of a full moon you are a perfumed woman in a bronze dress who shatters glass with a vengeance, searching in vain for signs and clues among the rubies and emeralds that litter museum floors. THE MUSEUM WORKS FOR SCIENCE NOT FOR LOOT, the doctor tells you. You laugh at his bandaged face, the sad, smoldering eyes— the only things visible beneath the gauze. "You can't tell the blood from the paint splashed on these walls," you say with contempt, reaching out for his arm in spite of yourself. He moves away. "I dislike being touched," he whispers, "pardon me—it's an Eastern prejudice." You never see his anguish; he won't allow it. His pride is what keeps him going. Exhausted, you lie amid the rubble. The mummy guards your body and you dream of straddling your sleeping lover's back like a dolphin you ride underwater safe within the confines of deserted museum halls.

In a strange house, a strange bed in a strange town, a very strange me is waiting for you. Now it is very early in the morning. The silence is loud. The baby is walking about with his foaming bottle, making strange sounds and deciding, after all, to be my friend. You arrive tonight. How dull time is! How empty—and yet, since I am sitting here, lying here, walking up and down here, waiting, I see that time's cruel ability to make one wait is time's reality. I see your hair which I call red. I lie here in this bed. Someone teased me once, a friend of ours — saying that I saw your hair red because I was not thinking of the hair on your head. Someone also told me, a long time ago: my father said to me, It is a terrible thing, son, to fall into the hands of the living God.

Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. W a i t. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. NOW.