Poemunity — your poem community

To crease a sheet of paper is to change its memory, says the origami master: what was a field of snow folded into flake. A crane, erect, structured from surface. A tree emerges from a leaf—each form undone reveals the seams, pressed with ruler's edge. Some figures take hundreds to be shaped, crossed & doubled over, the sheet bound to its making—a web of scars that maps a body out of space, how I fashion memory: idling at an intersection next to Jack Yates High, an hour past the bell, I saw a girl fold herself in half to slip beneath the busted chain-link, books thrust ahead, splayed on asphalt broiling in Houston sun. What memory will she retain? Her cindered palms, the scraped shin? Braids brushing the dirt? The white kite of her homework taking flight? Finding herself locked out, or being made to break herself in.

My mother says: When Mama tried to teach me to make collards and potato salad I didn't want to learn. She opens the box of pancake mix, adds milk and eggs, stirs. I watch grateful for the food we have now —syrup waiting in the cabinet, bananas to slice on top. It's Saturday morning. Five days a week, she leaves us to work at an office back in Brownsville. Saturday we have her to ourselves, all day long. Me and Kay didn't want to be inside cooking. She stirs the lumps from the batter, pours it into the buttered, hissing pan. Wanted to be with our friends running wild through Greenville. There was a man with a peach tree down the road. One day Robert climbed over that fence, filled a bucket with peaches. Wouldn't share them with any of us but told us where the peach three was. And that's where we wanted to be sneaking peaches from that man's tree, throwing the rotten ones at your uncles! Mama wanted us to learn to cook. Ask the boys, we said. And Mama knew that wasn't fair girls inside and the boys going off to steal peaches! So she let all of us stay outside until suppertime. And by then,

You must laugh at yourself, laugh and laugh. Music swells the emotions; music exists to punctuate seeing. Emotion, therefore, is punctuation. Formless, freedom resembles abasement. Abasement is as infinite as desire. You must laugh at yourself, laugh and laugh. Those who are not demons are saints. You are not a demon or a saint. Women are small and want something, so laugh at yourself, laugh and laugh. Bed are sites of abasement. The news is about the news. Faces in close-up are always in anguish. Hair and teeth are clues to class. Clothes are changing, hanging up or down And change itself is a laugh. Cause can’t be figured and consequence is yet to come. You’re either awake or asleep and that, too, is a clue to class. Children are never with groups of children unless they are singing in chorus. Their mothers cannot do enough, though there’s always room for improvement. And improvement lies in progress, though collapsing is good for a laugh. Saints will turn to the worse. Demons die if they can be found. Nature is combat, weather is sublime. Even weather can make you laugh. People you don’t know are louder than you are, but what is far away cannot harm you— Books are objects, families are inspiring. Animals protect their young; the young come with the territory. English is the only language. Reading is an occasion for interruption, and interruption is a kind of laugh. Something is bound to get better. And there is a pill with your name on it. When indoors, stick with your own race— that way you’ll feel free to laugh. Strangers are paying attention to your smell. A camera will light like a moth on disaster. Pity will turn to irony. The street is a dark and frightful place. Fires are daily. Your car is your face. You must laugh at yourself, laugh and laugh.

Those notes are fetching when they touch the ear. It's true, there are more tears in sand than water. "Come out and play," the song's refrain in my head, my sawdust showing. My heart, your eyes is what the day made. There, the notes, the song, the besidedness to live on Saturday, to walk out, wanted to, right out the frame. The sadness, gas pumps, sunshine on oil, that crow overhead destroys the picture. Everything faking it so badly. What's so wrong about the real, so off with clarity, dumbfuck, shirttail-hanging scatter-brained word. Shattered-pane world? The whir of the camera inside pictures but we want the voice to lift, don't we, across the mini-plaza to where? How about pulling taffy for a living or a rabbit from one ideal-ology to another. That's the trick isn't it, parallel lives? You know, here a dumpster there a Dane. On the street I see birds, bricks, clouds I see a friend getting into her car I see myself in the puddle I see. And even if we pray to remain unabated, a minor chord can sometimes reconnoiter the most distant thoughts camouflaged in lace and literature. O western wind let's not decorate the light with roseate diadems, plumbago shadows in the rushes. Haven't we heard enough from the birds, their annual trips and cross-talk? Listen. The arc of a rocket is louder than a rainbow.

Snow White was nude at her wedding, she’s so white the gown seemed to disappear when she put it on. Put me beside her and the proximity is good for a study of chiaroscuro, not much else. Her name aggravates me most, as if I need to be told what’s white and what isn’t. Judging strictly by appearance there’s a future for me forever at her heels, a shadow’s constant worship. Is it fair for me to live that way, unable to get off the ground? Turning the tables isn’t fair unless they keep turning. Then there’s the danger of Russian roulette and my disadvantage: nothing falls from the sky to name me. I am the empty space where the tooth was, that my tongue rushes to fill because I can’t stand vacancies. And it’s not enough. The penis just fills another gap. And it’s not enough. When you look at me, know that more than white is missing.

How do you feel about me Now that you've learned to know me? Why don't we both admit That something is happening. And we would feel better if We'd just tell each other No need to keep it to ourselves. Let's put it to music Let's put it to music Let's sing about it Laugh about it Clap our hands And shout about it Let the whole world hear it In a sweet, sweet melody Let's put it to music, you and me.

Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free. (America never was America to me.) Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed— Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above. (It never was America to me.) O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe. (There's never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.") Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

Let it be forgotten, as a flower is forgotten, Forgotten as a fire that once was singing gold, Let it be forgotten for ever and ever, Time is a kind friend, he will make us old. If anyone asks, say it was forgotten Long and long ago, As a flower, as a fire, as a hushed footfall In a long forgotten snow.

Let it be known to all, the story Of the glorious struggle of my people. Let it be known that black men and women Helped to build this our country. Let it be known that black men and women of the past In an effort to make this country What it ought to be, gave up their very last To make America, a real democracy A true homeland of the free. Let our leaders of today go back into the past And come fighting forth envigored with the spirit Of Turner, and Vesey, Douglass, Tubman and Truth. Let our stalwart black youth, lift their heads in pride As they tell of their fathers' fight for freedom To the white youth by their side. Yes, let it be known. Let all of the old folks tell it Sing it to the babes yet in arms. Let us read the glorious story Right along with our Bible. Let it be known to all, The story of the glorious struggles of my people. Too long…Too long has it been kept from us.

We must not look for poetry in poems. —Donald Revell You must not skirt the issue wearing skirts. You must not duck the bullet using ducks. You must not face the music with your face. Headbutting, don’t use your head. Or your butt. You must not use a house to build a home, and never look for poetry in poems. In fact, inject giraffes into your poems. Let loose the circus monkeys in their skirts. Explain the nest of wood is not a home at all, but a blind for shooting wild ducks. Grab the shotgun by its metrical butt; aim at your Muse’s quacking, Pringled face. It’s good we’re talking like this, face to face. There should be more headbutting over poems. Citing an 80s brand has its cost but honors the teenage me, always in skirts, showing my sister how to Be the Duck with a potato-chip beak. Take me home, Mr. Revell. Or make yourself at home in my postbellum, Reconstruction face— my gray eyes, my rebel ears, all my ducks in the row of a defeated mouth. Poems were once civil. But war has torn my skirts off at the first ruffle, baring my butt