Cornelius Eady

You know, the white guy In the film version of Raisin In The Sun, Pudgy balding head, Who comes to tell The black family Not to move to the White Chicago suburb. The man who smiles With the knife, Who IS a knife, But fools them for A second, because They’re looking at him The way he expects Them to look at him. Later, as they mop Up the blood, they replay What he said: that he Was elected by his neighbors, Because he’s the guy that Can get his foot in the door, Whipped and rumpled, Like he’s been apologizing Since he popped out of his Mother’s womb, like he’s a Close, personal friend of sorry. He’s sorry now, in his wilted suit. This is the way the knife Gets through the door, and He sits there, as they Think, maybe he ain’t a Knife in sheep clothes, baaa Baaa, baaa; such a foolish-looking, Goofy little white guy. A small part of them, quietly Embarrassed they’re even Thinking that about him. They can barely hold their Manners in check, and that’s His trick, the trick of the knife You don’t see until you’re cut. And the strangest thing About this, the damn thing Is how meek he still looks After he cuts, and cuts again. Dun as a female robin, His tongue slices and whittles. He is singing the song of his Brood; money if you stay, Fire if you come, as they think: How did a white robe, a tinder cross, And goon’s club trot through Their door? A pack of Dobermans Couldn’t have done a neater job, Except that Dobermans of course, never Apologize.

The streamers choking the main arteries Of downtown. The brass band led by a child From the home for the handicapped. The old men Showing their hair (what’s left of it), The buttons of their shirts Popping in time To the salsa flooding out Of their portable headphones, And mothers letting their babies Be held by strangers. And the bus drivers Taping over their fare boxes And willing to give directions. Is there any reason to mention All the drinks are on the house? Thick, adolescent boys Dismantle their BB guns. Here is the world (what’s left of it), In brilliant motion, The oil slick at the curb Danced into a thousand Splintered steps. The bag ladies toss off their Garments To reveal wings. “This dance you do,” drawls the cop, “What do you call it?” We call it scalding the air. We call it dying with your Shoes on. And across the street The bodies of tramps Stumble In a sober language. And across the street Shy young girls step behind Their nameless boyfriends, Twirling their skirts. And under an archway A delivery boy discovers His body has learned to speak, And what does this street look like If not a runway, A polished wood floor? From the air, Insects drawn by the sweat Alight, when possible, On the blur Of torsos. It is the ride Of their tiny lives. The wind that burns their wings, The heaving, oblivious flesh, Mountains stuffed with panic, An ocean That can’t make up its mind. They drop away With the scorched taste Of vertigo. And under a swinging light bulb Some children Invent a game With the shadow the bulb makes, And the beat of their hearts. They call it dust in the mouth. They call it horse with no rider. They call it school with empty books. In the next room Their mother throws her dress away to chance. It drops to the floor Like a brush sighs across a drum head, And when she takes her lover, What are they thinking of If not a ballroom filled with mirrors, A world where no one has the right To stumble? In a parking lot An old man says this: “I am a ghost dance. I remember the way my hair felt, Damp with sweat and wind. When the wind kisses the leaves, I am dancing. When the subway hits the third rail, I am dancing. When the barrel goes over Niagara Falls, I am dancing. Music rings my bones like metal. O, Jazz has come from heaven,” he says, And at the z he jumps, arcing his back like a heron’s neck, And stands suddenly revealed As a balance demon, A home for Stetson hats. We have all caught the itch: The neon artist Wiring up his legs, The tourist couple Recording the twist on their Instamatic camera, And in a factory, A janitor asks his broom For a waltz, And he grasps it like a woman He’d have to live another Life to meet, And he spins around the dust bin And machines and thinks: Is everybody happy? And he spins out the side door, Avoiding the cracks in the sidewalk, Grinning as if he’d just received The deepest kiss in the world.

I walk into the bakery next door To my apartment. They are about To pull some sort of toast with cheese From the oven.   When I ask: What’s that smell? I am being A poet, I am asking What everyone else in the shop Wanted to ask, but somehow couldn’t; I am speaking on behalf of two other Customers who wanted to buy the Name of it.   I ask the woman Behind the counter for a percentage Of her sale. Am I flirting? Am I happy because the days Are longer?   Here’s what She does: She takes her time Choosing the slices.   “I am picking Out the good ones,” she tells me.   It’s April 14th. Spring, with five to ten Degrees to go.   Some days, I feel my duty; Some days, I love my work.

for Jim Schley The umbrella, in this case; Earlier, the stool, the Wooden pillars that hold up the roof. This guy, you realize, Will dance with anything— —He likes the idea. Then he picks up some lady’s discarded sandals, Holds them next to his head like sea shells, Donkey ears. Nothing, his body states, Is safe from the dance of ideas!

New York grows Slimmer In his absence. I suppose You could also title this picture Of Miles, his leathery Squint, the grace In his fingers a sliver of the stuff You can’t get anymore, As the rest of us wonder: What was the name Of the driver Of that truck? And the rest Of us sigh: Death is one hell Of a pickpocket.

Your body, hard vowels In a soft dress, is still. What you can't know is that after you died All the black poets In New York City Took a deep breath, And breathed you out; Dark corners of small clubs, The silence you left twitching On the floors of the gigs You turned your back on, The balled-up fists of notes Flung, angry from a keyboard. You won't be able to hear us Try to etch what rose Off your eyes, from your throat. Out you bleed, not as sweet, or sweaty, Through our dark fingertips. We drum rest We drum thank you We drum stay .

You’re rich, lady, hissed the young woman at My mother as she bent in her garden. Look at what you’ve got, and it was Too much, the collards and tomatoes, A man, however lousy, taking care of the bills. This was the reason for the early deaths My mother was to find from that point on, Turned dirt and the mock of roots, Until finally, she gave her garden up. You can’t have nothing, she tells us, Is the motto of our neighborhood, These modest houses That won’t give an inch.

Some folks will tell you the blues is a woman, Some type of supernatural creature. My mother would tell you, if she could, About her life with my father, A strange and sometimes cruel gentleman. She would tell you about the choices A young black woman faces. Is falling in love with some man A deal with the devil In blue terms, the tongue we use When we don't want nuance To get in the way, When we need to talk straight. My mother chooses my father After choosing a man Who was, as we sing it, Of no account. This man made my father look good, That's how bad it was. He made my father seem like an island In the middle of a stormy sea, He made my father look like a rock. And is the blues the moment you realize You exist in a stacked deck, You look in a mirror at your young face, The face my sister carries, And you know it's the only leverage You've got. Does this create a hurt that whispers How you going to do? Is the blues the moment You shrug your shoulders And agree, a girl without money Is nothing, dust To be pushed around by any old breeze. Compared to this, My father seems, briefly, To be a fire escape. This is the way the blues works Its sorry wonders, Makes trouble look like A feather bed, Makes the wrong man's kisses A healing.

My friends, As it has been proven in the laboratory, An empty pair of dance shoes Will sit on the floor like a wart Until it is given a reason to move. Those of us who study inertia (Those of us covered with wild hair and sleep) Can state this without fear: The energy in a pair of shoes at rest Is about the same as that of a clown Knocked flat by a sandbag. This you can tell your friends with certainty: A clown, flat on his back, Is a lot like an empty pair of dancing shoes. An empty pair of dancing shoes Is also a lot like a leaf Pressed in a book. And now you know a simple truth: A leaf pressed in, say,The Colossus by Sylvia Plath, Is no different from an empty pair of dance shoes Even if those shoes are in the middle of the Stardust Ballroom With all the lights on, and hot music shakes the windows up and down the block. This is the secret of inertia: The shoes run on their own sense of the world. They are in sympathy with the rock the kid skips over the lake After it settles to the mud. Not with the ripples, But with the rock. A practical and personal application of inertia Can be found in the question: Whose Turn Is It To Take Out The Garbage? An empty pair of dance shoes Is a lot like the answer to this question, As well as book-length poems Set in the Midwest. To sum up: An empty pair of dance shoes Is a lot like the sand the 98-pound weakling brushes from his cheeks As the bully tows away his girlfriend. Later, When he spies the coupon at the back of the comic book, He is about to act upon a different set of scientific principles. He is ready to dance.

Off go the crows from the roof. The crows can’t hold on. They might as well Be perched on an oil slick. Such an awkward dance, These gentlemen In their spottled-black coats. Such a tipsy dance, As if they didn’t know where they were. Such a humorous dance, As they try to set things right, As the wind reduces them. Such a sorrowful dance. How embarrassing is love When it goes wrong In front of everyone.