Dawn Lundy Martin

When the bed is empty, we pull the shades to block light, light of resemblance to remembery, long light of waiting, an impatience in the glows of it. The here of the now and the glow that days make in the room, without the body but with the stench of it. So we say,vacancy and abject,against the was, against a philosophy of once and then not. Not-being against. A child once grew here. As lines on a wall. As growing without knowing what would one day not be. A gnawing grows. Grew and was. Protection is curled. Motion- less. I envy her in her room. Hers with paint and dolls and hand- prints. Great green and glowing under blankets with a hand that nurtures the heart of the mouth, purrs into mouth, loves the heart. Heart beating within another—blushing blood— God, the beating, lit, and doing what it does.

What is the sound of sounds sounding indefinite fist in face again and sound of the surprise of it coming from nowhere, of breaking the arm on a small fall in your own house, a respiratory failure, wound opening like a little mouth. We inhabit the brutal. We are shattered everyday. We look askew. Head broken floor array, light array, great distances, life goals. Staked upon every border, guardians. Protections have many faces. Misuse of the face as a streaming desire. Solution posted: “Get rid of all the niggers.” The state exacts its controls. That the pepper spray happens against kneeling children— That the search for the secret leaker is unyielding— If you want, you can make a myopic focus, concentrate on a shone shadow or drift off into space.

1. The contours of the girl blur. She is both becoming and fact. A rancor defines the split. Rip into. Flatten the depth of voice. That urgent flex peels off the steady layers. A girl, I say. Girl. Gu-erl. Quell. He. He—unbuttons before emergence. As in yard rake pressed to roof of mouth. A fragrant rod. Suh—sssuh—ssuck. Insistence. Lips go lisp. Our brutish boy. Having not ever been whole. Or simple. Or young. Just split and open. Not of it. For it. Born a cog of hard wheel at five, six, seven . . . What to know of what has never been? 2. No common place would do: bar stool, front porch, sea rock. Such a room should crawl into the soul. Stretch it. Contort it. Could be the straddle of this stranger at the neck.Iam this. She does not waver. She is twenty-five. The bed is wet. As many as had done this thing before. The wound is rupture. Blood-faced. Between sailing and anchor. No, between shipwreck and burial. What does the mouth do? It does not mean no, saying no. It does not mean yes. It gurgles. It swells. It is comfort. A quick kick. Mighty, mighty.

If they would only just beat or shoot me, but they wanted soul substance, to harbor that like that, so I could never move from this place. So they reach crackled hands inside and hold it open for raking ... We in a shit rustle, the way in ramble and camaraderie, brown hand of whose mother makes its smooth noise over my mouth? The burden of saying some thing, a head- nodding, and I want to be in- side of your knowing. Who laid their head on the disappeared’s pillow? One minute a person licks your ear, the next, you cannot see your own white breath. We gotta head on over to the party way out in Bushwick because we’re lost, and our flesh is on fire. There’s a man walking behind us. And growing. This is what I tell him: I am not a boy in anyone’s body. I am not a black in a black body. I will not kowtow inside your opposites. How the world blisters you. How hunger left you statued. • One falls past the lip of some black unknown, where time, they say, ends. We got us a sugar- mouth, a bit feeding, walk in circles in circular rooms built so precisely for our shapes, hold the figure that is the body that is, of course, me. I stroke the feather that feeds me, that lines my cage floor with minor luxuries, I say “mama” in its wanting sugary mouth. What is the difference between ash and coal, between dark and darkened, between love and addiction on Dekalb at 2 am, and I fall drunk from a ruinous taxi, already ruined from before before, the absent weight screams into your breath,you are no good, no good... The space between I and It. Lolling. The Ibibio man was not born in his cowboy hat. Even his throat must ache like tired teeth. • Look what I am holding! Not desire, but infinite multiplicity, the mouth of existence. To sing the blue song of longing, its webbed feet along jungle floor. What of our mechanical arm, our off-melody? Purpose in the gathering, I know, dear self. It rains and we think, God, or we think Universe. I say, portent across the wind. When wind is wrought, whole song fallen from its lip, some black unknown, where they say, time ends. What speech into hard God breath just as night park is godless? What of a silver cube in the mouth?This is our wandering.

Dear one, the sea smells of nostalgia. We’re beached and bloated, lie on shell sand, oil rigs nowhere seen. It’s Long Island, and the weather is fine. What to disturb in the heart of a man? A boy is not a body. A boy is a walk. Shed the machine. Must be entirely flesh to fight. Must be strategy instead of filling. What to disrobe, there, centrifugal logic, as in here is a slice of my finger. Tell me the circumstance of your dick extension. When we slip into imprecision, we lose control, windowless walls close in. Awareness of being in a female body is a tinge of regret. “The human frame to adapt itself to convention though she herself was a woman.” To receive, to be entered, to fret around upon entry. It’s grand. I’m a system. Plants tall as wheat to hide in.