Camille T. Dungy

I. Only now, in spring, can the place be named: tulip poplar, daffodil, crab apple, dogwood, budding pink-green, white-green, yellow on my knowing.   All winter I was lost. Fall, I found myself here, with no texture my fingers know.   Then, worse, the white longing that downed us deep three months.   No flower heat. That was winter.   But now, in spring, the buds flock our trees.   Ten million exquisite buds, tiny and loud, flaring their petalled wings, bellowing from ashen branches vibrant keys, the chords of spring’s triumph: fisted heart, dogwood; grail, poplar; wine spray, crab apple. The song is drink, is color.   Come.   Now.   Taste. II. The song is drink, is color.   Come now, taste what the world has to offer.   When you eat you will know that music comes in guises— bold of crepe myrtle, sweet of daffodil— beyond sound, guises they never told you could be true.   And they aren’t.   Except they are so real now, this spring, you know them, taste them. Green as kale, the songs of spring, bright as wine, the music.   Faces of this season grin with clobbering wantonness—see the smiles open on each branch?—until you, too, smile. Wide carnival of color, carnival of scent.   We’re all lurching down streets, drunk now from the poplar’s grail.   Wine spray: crab apple. III. From the poplar’s grail, wine spray.   Crab apple brightens jealously to compete.   But by the crab apple’s deep stain, the tulip tree learns modesty.   Only blush, poplar learns, lightly.   Never burn such a dark-hued fire to the core.   Tulip poplar wants herself light under leaf, never, like crab apple, heavy under tart fruit.   Never laden. So the poplar pours just a hint of wine in her cup, while the crab apple, wild one, acts as if her body were a fountain. She would pour wine onto you, just let her. Shameless, she plants herself, and delivers, down anyone’s street, bright invitations. IV. Down anyone’s street-bright invitations. Suck ‘em.   Swallow ‘em.   Eat them whole.   That’s right, be greedy about it.   The brightness calls and you follow because you want to taste, because you want to be welcomed inside the code of that color: red for thirst; green for hunger; pink, a kiss; and white, stain me now.   Soil me with touching.   Is that right? No?   That’s not, you say, what you meant.   Not what you meant at all?   Pardon.   Excuse me, please. Your hand was reaching, tugging at this shirt of flowers and I thought, I guess I thought you were hungry for something beautiful. Come now.   The brightness here might fill you up. V. Come.   Now the brightness here might fill you up, but tomorrow?   Who can know what the next day will bring.   It is like that, here, in spring. Four days ago, the dogwood was a fist in protest.   Now look.   Even she unfurls to the pleasure of the season.   Don’t be ashamed of yourself.   Don’t be.    This happens to us all.   We have thrown back the blanket. We’re naked and we’ve grown to love ourselves. I tell you, do not be ashamed.   Who is more wanton than the dancing crepe myrtle? Is she ashamed?   Why, even the dogwood, that righteous tree of God’s, is full of lust exploding into brightness every spring. VI. Exploding into brightness every spring, I draw you close.   I wonder, do you know how long I’ve wanted to be here?   Each year you grasp me, lift me, carry me inside. Glee is the body of the daffodil reaching tubed fingers through the day, feeling her own trumpeted passion choiring air with hot, colored song.   This is a texture I love.   This is life.   And, too, you love me, inhale my whole being every spring.   Gone winter, heavy clod whose icy body fell into my bed.   I must leave you, but I’ll wait through heat, fall, freeze to hear you cry: Daffodils are up.   My God, what beauty! VII. Daffodils are up, my God!   What beauty concerted down on us last night.   And if I sleep again, I’ll wake to a louder blossoming, the symphony smashing down hothouse walls, and into the world: music. Something like the birds’ return, each morning’s crescendo rising toward its brightest pitch, colors unfurling, petals alluring. The song, the color, the rising ecstasy of spring.   My God.   This beauty.   This, this is what I’ve hoped for.   All my life is here in the unnamed core—dogwood, daffodil, tulip poplar, crab apple, crepe myrtle— only now, in spring, can the place be named.

Sara, widow, 31 Henry pulled our heartwood along the rutted street that town stood beside, built two rooms and called them home. My Henry did that. There. And I lived all those days inside his love. But there is a kind of hunger that feeds on flesh. Only, let it be yearning, heaving, rising flesh. Only, let it be flesh living and loving. Alive. Let it be life. There is a kind of hunger that feeds on life. They carved into him with banquet knives, made stew of his skin and stirred it with his own bones. My Henry served: the meat and the pot to cook it in. And there was no charge against the men who made that meal.

coming from a place where we meandered mornings and met quail, scrub jay, mockingbird, i knew coyote, like everyone else, i knew 
cactus, knew tumbleweed, lichen on the rocks and pill bugs beneath, rattlers sometimes, the soft smell of sage and the ferment of cactus pear. coming from this place, from a place where grass might grow greener on the hillside in winter than in any yard, where, the whole rest of the year, everything i loved, chaparral pea, bottle brush tree, jacaranda, mariposa, pinyon and desert oak, the kumquat in the back garden and wisteria vining the porch, the dry grass whispering long after the last rains, raccoons in and out of the hills, trash hurled by the hottest wind, the dry grass tall now and golden, lawn chairs, 
eucalyptus, everything, in a place we knew, every thing, we knew, little and large and mine and ours, except horror, all of it, everything could flame up that quickly, could flare and be gone.

gone from a man claimed the girl a man named the girl got the girl stored up in his room • ran away runaway gone Dinah gone • 19years of age about five foot three inches brown hair         a cask-shaped mark over her left eye • no one speaks no speech just hatching • thought he knew her well when she was in there with him not a word was spoken who to trust now? thought he knew • presents a gap between her upper foreteeth when she smiles

Sing the mass— light upon me washing words now that I am gone. The sky was a hot, blue sheet the summer breeze fanned out and over the town. I could have lived forever under that sky. Forgetting where I was, I looked left, not right, crossed into a street and stepped in front of the bus that ended me. Will you believe me when I tell you it was beautiful— my left leg turned to uselessness and my right shoe flung some distance down the road? Will you believe me when I tell you I had never been so in love with anyone as I was, then, with everyone I saw? The way an age-worn man held his wife’s shaking arm, supporting the weight that seemed to sing from the heart she clutched. Knowing her eyes embraced the pile that was me, he guided her sacked body through the crowd. And the way one woman began a fast the moment she looked under the wheel. I saw her swear off decadence. I saw her start to pray. You see, I was so beautiful the woman sent to clean the street used words like police tape to keep back a young boy seconds before he rounded the grisly bumper. The woman who cordoned the area feared my memory would fly him through the world on pinions of passion much as, later, the sight of my awful beauty pulled her down to tears when she pooled my blood with water and swiftly, swiftly washed my stains away.

Christ bore what suffering he could and died a young man, but you waited years to learn how to heal. Only when you could did you touch the man whose body blistered for yours. You posted him no news for sixteen terms, then just a signed graduation notice. The letter he wrote that week asked only, Now that your books are closed, can boys come in? At your wedding, you buried the woman you thought you knew inside a stranger’s name. This is how you found yourself: thirty-three, nursing a son. Soon there was another. Your mind had already begun to walk. But you were a mother. Those cribs held you.

Why not a crocus from this bulb? Why not the purple of bees’ lust so that, in honey, she might taste something good? Under skin, purple is a private taste, closer to the blood of her tongue, closer to the blood she chokes on when she’s gasping, to the clot behind her blackened eye. The heated force that slammed her shin, that pushed bone from the bone, that arched her but did not approach caress, is another kind of lust. Spring: a madness of grappling. Isn’t that what she sees outside every window? And inside? Nothing unique going on.

My lover, who lives far away, opens the door to my room and offers supper in a bowl made of his breath. The stew has boiled and I wonder at the cat born from its steam. The cat is in the bedroom now, mewling. The cat is indecent and I, who am trying to be tidy, I, who am trying to do things the proper way, I, who am sick from the shedding, I am undone. My lover, who lives far away, opens the door to my room and offers pastries in a basket spun from his vision. It is closely woven, the kind of container some women collect. I have seen these in many colors, but the basket he brings is simple: only black, only nude. The basket he brings is full of sweet scones and I eat even the crumbs. As if I've not dined for days. My lover, who lives far away, opens the door to my room and offers tea made from the liquid he's crying. I do not want my lover crying and I am sorry I ever asked for tea. My lover, who lives far away, opens the door to my room pretending he never cried. He offers tea and cold cakes. The tea is delicious: spiced like the start of our courtship, honeyed and warm. I drink every bit of the tea and put aside the rest. My lover, who lives far away, opens the door to my room like a man loving his strength. The lock I replaced this morning will not keep him away. My lover, who lives far away, opens the door to my room and brings me nothing. Perhaps he has noticed how fat I've grown, indulged. Perhaps he is poor and sick of emptying his store. It is no matter to me any longer, he has filled me, already, so full. My lover who is far away opens the door to my room and tells me he is tired. I do not ask what he's tired from for my lover, far away, has already disappeared. The blankets are big with his body. The cat, under the covers, because it is cold out and she is not stupid, mews.

(February, 1841) Melinda, I've been preparing to write. That peculiar girl named Molly, who has a bit of liberty in the house, has said she'll find some paper. I have practiced mixing charred wood with water and have managed to shave a twig so one end nearly resembles a nib, but tonight Lila got caught up under the good Doctor's whip for such a little offense. I am frightened. Doctor Jackson brought in a new troop of slaves today. A boy of thirteen among them had the welted cheek that speaks of a driver's dissatisfaction. Lila put a poultice on to ease the swelling, but Jackson wants the boy to understand his place and thinks a scar will help. Lila's back and neck and arms have thirty new wounds to replace the one she thought to heal. Melinda, how is Jacob? Ever yours, (February, 1841) Do you ever start at night believing I might be dead? I leave my body sometimes, Melinda. Is that all dying is? Remember how I'd scold you when the stew was thin, believing I needed a thick stock to forge muscle for all the work I had ahead? Your stew would make me big again, Melinda. Sometimes we have to trap, skin and roast possum, rabbit, snake and squirrel. Except for that, I have swallowed naught but salt pork and coarse meal in all my days away from you. But I work just fine. Ever your beloved husband, (March, 1841) What a herd of slaves Jackson brought in last month. No sooner had their strength returned after the long march to the farm from Lynchburg but they began to plot another run. We didn't know they'd planned to leave until they were already gone a day. All manner of neighborhood men came around to tip Jackson's whiskey and help him on the hunt, though all they brought back for their trouble were two bodies. One dead, one fighting off living. That boy I told you about, Ben with the slashed cheek? At the stony fork of the river Doc Jackson found his body, cut up, twisted as if it had fought long under water, a dead hand pointing in the direction his netted sister and the "damned lost lot of niggers" had run. I guess he was too obstinate even for the water to hold down easily. Jackson used Ben like a scarecrow, his shirt hooked on a pole, his body meant to warn us from the road. Lila's still not certain that the girl will live. Until tomorrow, I am ever your Joe. (December, 1843) William is the name Smythe matched to my description when he shipped me from his Wilmington slave pen to the Richmond consigner Jackson bought me from. So I am William, though it took more than one whipping for me to remember it. There is a woman keeps the kitchen here prefers we call her Auntie. She's been called so many names she "most forgets" which one means her. I trust Jacob is getting on in school just fine. I was, at his age, learning to carry myself with the pride of a Freeman. It's been many years since I've been able to answer to any person calling me that name. And Jacob? Can he remember his father? Please hug him for me, Melinda. I am ever your husband, (November, 1845) How many live on our alley in Philadelphia? There, this room might accommodate a bed and two chairs, but here we are three men, two women, some potions, and a girl. We sleep in turns. Marlo often walks the woods at night, his eye out on the traps for all of us.   'Dolphus steals sleep in the smithing shop and steals everything else before dawn. Just last week, we bore the tread of a muzzled goat and two hens he brought in from a neighbor's farm. Our field sweat adds stench to the store of bones, feathers, brews, and herbs Lila claims can cure the women on this place. Sadie, who Lila never tried to stop herself from bearing, sleeps with her body wedged behind the door. Molly swings it in her side each night when she turns up to sleep after Miss Amy's laudanum takes and again when she races the conch call to the house in the morning. Even Lena, who had a well-built cabin of her own when she lived on the place, pushed four babies off her tit to make room for the Doctor and for Miss Amy's boy. I wonder, Melinda, are your wages enough, since I went away, to satisfy the rent? Yours in tribulation, (December, 1847) The Doctor's had his eye on Molly since he caught her listening while the tutor drilled his son on Greek. She says the boy translates slowly. On a war now, his spoiled tongue has spent two days flogging some warrior's impenetrable shield. Molly showed me yesterday what a heart looks like. Traced it in the dirt that is my bed, my stool, my desk, my cabin floor. I miss you, Melinda. I miss feeling the little skip your heart took sometimes, though I know the pinch that came along with the stutter pained you.   Molly is a smart girl, though brutal in her zeal. She's quicker than a butcher to find cause to wield a knife. I am certain the Doctor will lapse in his vigilance soon enough. Then I will chance to capture on the page one of these letters. May God be good and grant so large a prayer. Yours, (January, 1848) We are like to lose another hand unless 'Dolphus can recover from the flogging he took over a missing pair of cufflinks. The girl who was brought home with Ben's body was quickly well enough to work, and she had less skin on her bones than Doctor Jackson left on 'Dolphus. Perhaps there is some little hope for Lila's husband. Molly is afraid to sneak me any of the Doctor's paper. Molly, who can be as bad as 'Dolphus about purloining pretty, useful things. I doubted she was earnest in her fear, but now I see what she, born here, must have always known. A man whose livelihood depends on stealing the toil of other people's bodies must keep a keen eye on his own most dear and precious things.

For T.S. Whose hands touched, first, the head of the penis, the shaft? And was it soft or shale?  More rock than clay. And who pinched first into their place the small cups at the base of the ass? Who was it got down there, on whose knees, and blew— and was that passion or panic, the machine that drove those exhalations? —and how could we rate the power of that breath—breeze or gale or a whisper like the song the little boy sings to the beetle, whose small legs moved in tune like his legs, the legs on that first body, must have moved, if they did move, when the dust settled. In my mind everything’s become enormous. But was it ever small like that, the first body? Did it ever sit close to the ants and their piles of dirt from which that body had come? You were a small boy once, I suppose. You were dirty from the start. You showed me how to use a cock ring, and why. How, without ever paying for a room, to spend two weeks in any city. How two men could fuck and continue to face each other directly —took my body and showed me, my back on a table, my knees by my head. Stretched me into seeing you were more than a dog. You must be dead by now, though I don’t know whose hands prepared you. Whose fingers fingered, for the final time, all that dark and kinky hair? If the first body was made of dirt, in order to plumb the hollow of that first throat, whose thumb first lodged inside the hinge of that first mouth to force it open? To make the tongue, so it could work, who shoved inside that mouth the shit of a hundred thousand worms?