Toi Derricotte

La poesie vit d’insomnie perpetuelle —René Char There’s a sickness in me. During the night I wake up & it’s brought a stain into my mouth, as if an ocean has risen & left back a stink on the rocks of my teeth. I stink. My mouth is ugly, human stink. A color like rust is in me. I can’t get rid of it. It rises after I brush my teeth, a taste like iron. In the night, left like a dream, a caustic light washing over the insides of me. * What to do with my arms? They coil out of my body like snakes. They branch & spit. I want to shake myself until they fall like withered roots; until they bend the right way— until I fit in them, or they in me. I have to lay them down as carefully as an old wedding dress, I have to fold them like the arms of someone dead. The house is quiet; all night I struggle. All because of my arms, which have no peace! * I’m a martyr, a girl who’s been dead two thousand years. I turn on my left side, like one comfortable after a long, hard death. The angels look down tenderly. “She’s sleeping,” they say & pass me by. But all night, I am passing in & out of my body on my naked feet. * I’m awake when I’m sleeping & I’m sleeping when I’m awake, & no one knows, not even me, for my eyes are closed to myself. I think I am thinking I see a man beside me, & he thinks in his sleep that I’m awake writing. I hear a pen scratch a paper. There is some idea I think is clever: I want to capture myself in a book. * I have to make a place for my body in my body. I’m like a dog pawing a blanket on the floor. I have to turn & twist myself like a rag until I can smell myself in myself. I’m sweating; the water is pouring out of me like silver. I put my head in the crook of my arm like a brilliant moon. * The bones of my left foot are too heavy on the bones of my right. They lie still for a little while, sleeping, but soon they bruise each other like angry twins. Then the bones of my right foot command the bones of my left to climb down.

i knew you before you had a mother, when you were newtlike, swimming, a horrible brain in water. i knew you when your connections belonged only to yourself, when you had no history to hook on to, barnacle, when you had no sustenance of metal when you had no boat to travel when you stayed in the same place, treading the question; i knew you when you were all eyes and a cocktail, blank as they sky of a mind, a root, neither ground nor placental; not yet red with the cut nor astonished by pain, one terrible eye open in the center of your head to night, turning, and the stars blinked like a cat.   we swam in the last trickle of champagne before we knew breastmilk—we shared the night of the closet, the parasitic closing on our thumbprint, we were smudged in a yellow book. son, we were oak without mouth, uncut, we were brave before memory.

i was left out i was chosen second & then left out i was left handed  i was left to fend for myself   i was the second in command  the second in line   i came without direction * i want the milk  i want my first pick  i want choice   & all its implications  there was a * residue of scar between us  it chafed when we rubbed our chests together * hello, brother, hello? hello in there, brother, can you hear me?  it's a long tunnel to the grave    speak you were my first god  i was rapt in your coming (mother better eat her vegetables, she better chew) choo choo what's bitter between us * i want the milk  i need it for my teeth  they're soft  the gums bleed  there's the evidence on my toothbrush  i got the second draft  i need calcium to make up  i got a job & left i don't know where you're buried * what do you need?  what will make you happy?  what do you want?  the dead do have mouths & appetites  suck it up   there's plenty in the ice box   more where that came from * if somebody asked me what's next  i wouldn't know  i took my hands off her like something hot  or fragile   or in pain  i was aghast  at suffering how you can feed & feed it & it's never full * there's a separation between us  a suppuration  there's just the space of an idea  i don't know what's missing  it's a blind spot  sometimes my left eye focuses & it's like looking at both of us through a window * i'm telling you the facts of life for you haven't been told you're in your late fifties  you're dis- eased or disinterested  a queer unable to come out of the casket  OK * you live this life  i'll live the next  she only has enough milk for one baby  i'll go around this time  you come the next  that time you'll have a better mother i promise you that

My mother was not impressed with her beauty; once a year she put it on like a costume, plaited her black hair, slick as cornsilk, down past her hips, in one rope-thick braid, turned it, carefully, hand over hand, and fixed it at the nape of her neck, stiff and elegant as a crown, with tortoise pins, like huge insects, some belonging to her dead mother, some to my living grandmother. Sitting on the stool at the mirror, she applied a peachy foundation that seemed to hold her down, to trap her, as if we never would have noticed what flew among us unless it was weighted and bound in its mask. Vaseline shined her eyebrows, mascara blackened her lashes until they swept down like feathers; her eyes deepened until they shone from far away. Now I remember her hands, her poor hands, which, even then were old from scrubbing, whiter on the inside than they should have been, and hard, the first joints of her fingers, little fattened pads, the nails filed to sharp points like old-fashioned ink pens, painted a jolly color. Her hands stood next to her face and wanted to be put away, prayed for the scrub bucket and brush to make them useful. And, as I write, I forget the years I watched her pull hairs like a witch from her chin, magnify every blotch—as if acid were thrown from the inside. But once a year my mother rose in her white silk slip, not the slave of the house, the woman, took the ironed dress from the hanger— allowing me to stand on the bed, so that my face looked directly into her face, and hold the garment away from her as she pulled it down.

The most popular “act” in Penn Station is the three black kids in ratty sneakers & T-shirts playing two violins and a cello—Brahms. White men in business suits have already dug into their pockets as they pass and they toss in a dollar or two without stopping. Brown men in work-soiled khakis stand with their mouths open, arms crossed on their bellies as if they themselves have always wanted to attempt those bars. One white boy, three, sits cross-legged in front of his idols—in ecstasy— their slick, dark faces, their thin, wiry arms, who must begin to look like angels! Why does this trembling pull us? A:Beneath the surface we are one. B:Amazing! I did not think that they could speak this tongue.