478 Identity poems

a thing that's called radar love, the whole hog calling, and here's unhoused Ginger, distracted wind-beaten beauty separating from park bench and Frigidaire carton, flying Halloween colors, tie-dye skirt, Orangesicle socks, where will she sleep tonight, where lay those tulle angel wings slashed through her overcoat, who pulses anarchist patchouli and minty hair draughts and cigarette spirits that scuff our fragile air while we hope for some pick-me-up before we pass.

My hair, voluminous from sleeping in six different positions, redolent with your scent, helps me recall that last night was indeed real, that it's possible for a bedspread to spawn a watershed in the membrane that keeps us shut in our own skins, mute without pleasure, that I didn't just dream you into being. You fit like a fig in the thick of my tongue, give my hands their one true purpose, find in my shoulder a groove for your head. In a clinch, you're clenched and I'm pinched, we're spooned, forked, wrenched, lynched in a chestnut by a mob of our own making, only to be resurrected to stage several revivals that arise from slightest touch to thwart deep sleep with necessities I never knew I knew until meeting you a few days or many distant, voluptuous lifetimes ago.

when i was 7, i hoped rocks would whisper the secret to being hard. fascinated by Keisha’s skin so soft, i seduced her into humping even though she was five years my senior and my babysitter—click of the light covers snatched away like a magic trick reveal i could hear Keisha wail one floor up through the radiator pipes—i was the victim. at 7, i decided i should’ve been born a boy, a he, a him. blamed my mama for her mistake. prayed for a penis and practiced peeing standing up until it came: aim, angle of lean, and straddle were crucial. toilet seat up, knees clamping the cool rim i let go of the golden flow feeling the warm wet trickle down my legs darkening my dungarees a new shade of blue. at 7, i was never afraid of putting things in my mouth: i chewed my fingernails till they bled, chewed pencils till the yellow paint flaked me a crusty mustache, chewed pen caps into odd sculptures, chewed pens until the inky cylinders leaked a Rorschach on my face kids pointing as i ran to the bathroom oooh a butterfly! no, a thundercloud … i wore my iron-on Bruce Lee sweatshirt till his face cracked and faded invisible. still, i felt invincible when i wore it kicking lunch tables with my shins. karate-chopping pencils in two. forever trying to impress the skirts with my awkward brand of goof. punching my arm to make lumps rise out of the bony sinew. at 7, i knew how to make a girl cry.

grandma you flew once over mount taranaki and landed on fanthams peak before the snow fell all over your city and when they looked up they thought they saw an angel but it was just you on your way home from the supermarket and your feet needed a rest

Impossible to wield The acreage of the fabric that unfolded, Slung from his shoulders like a crumpled field: The distance from one Christmas to the next When he was only seven Was aching there; a foreign city flexed Among the ripples; a face, the star-shocked heaven About his flailing arms were shrugged and moulded. Too heavy to outrun, Too slow to measure what it underwent, Though gradually the passage of the sun, Unmanageable in its train of light, Seemed almost to respond As he yanked the yards of stuff in like a kite And gathered the brocade that trailed beyond His arms' reach to the scale of measurement, However strange the weave That writhed about the working of his hands: The footage too atrocious to believe, Printed with corpses; Greece; the falls of salmon; Her upturned silken wrist He would have torn out history to examine; His father's final blessing, which he missed. However far he comes or where he stands, At last, and limb by limb, Contour by contour, that unfolded cape Settles ever more fittingly on him. His forehead is the line of the sky's vault, His shoulders trace the ground, His palms the ways he wandered by default, And in his gestures those he knew are found. What shape the day discovers is his shape.

Velroy de-jays the séance-turntables, spinning black water, scratching out full moons with red and blue curves of hip hop. In the dance club, bodies are a collection of sunrise songs in reverse. Corey wears her cat-eye contacts and no panties. There’s the bathroom-stall eagle medicine with Ecstasy placed on the tongue. She handles the lace like a Kiowa church hymn. Dee is Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, Kiowa, and Fort Sill Apache. He couldn’t enroll into any tribe but he can grass dance, bump and grind, and do the Jerry Lewis. Black girls love him. Stoney has four wives, Indian way. He has ghost medicine and carries a small white ball of clay. He sells peyote and coke to the white boys. I have a southern accent. I killed a Lakota man, he was a Rollin ’20. It was with a shotgun. It was powwow season, I fancy danced.

My mother does not trust women without it. What are they not hiding? Renders the dead living and the living more alive. Everything I say sets the clouds off blubbering like they knew the pretty dead. True, no mascara, no evidence. Blue sky, blank face. Blank face, a faithful liar, false bottom. Sorrow, a rabbit harbored in the head. The skin, a silly one-act, concurs. At the carnival, each child's cheek becomes a rainbow. God, grant me a brighter myself. Each breath, a game called Live Forever. I am small. Don't ask me to reconcile one shadow with another. I admit— paint the dead pink, it does not make them sunrise. Paint the living blue, it does not make them sky, or sea, a berry, clapboard house, or dead. God, leave us our costumes, don't blow in our noses, strip us to the underside of skin. Even the earth claims color once a year, dressed in red leaves as the trees play Grieving.

I'm feeling by ear. Consider them gods and not cruel but ecstatic. They have trick tongues and can't talk straight but use us as waves to curve words. In this moment we are here for their ride. Climb on under. Transport poetics in the transtraditionals, revering rumors revved high. We ask forgiveness for poem talk. I'm on her knees. She makes me say these things because she is a middle way like no other. The method is to wear me down to a base line vital pulse. Next pour right through carefully following the barely perceptible impulse. Almost dreams the state resists the name but go ahead and call it poetic that flares. Poetics remains neutral on its name but takes care when it comes to hers. There's a watch out on her names. It makes me wait until I have nothing else to fight with and then sets me loose. When I think what is being said I get a lump in the stomach. No go on the intellectual gizmo. Yes on any kind of lift, free run, no drift, too swift, the actual thing getting a lift. It hits the beat like rock bottom. The tongue gets hands on quick. The hearback suddenly gets high in the sense of crossing right on over.

like the lost car that a river knows like the heat of an ointment in pinpoints of breathing like the unknown western in mountains of tar like a knot in each word for comfort like a horse on a face with four hooves like the knives that a heart squirms into like the feel that the last day pushes, that a fire paints red like the shower that a plain divides in snakes like a frozen torso pining for food like the ammunition that a pair of wings makes dry like a shirt that plants seeds under worn out skin like the clouds of mistakes, pouring through sleep like the walls that crack open like a wake in a spin like the exits of oceans that a salmon knows like the dust that is written with number like a trust full of beacons of light like the negative shade of a fungus like the promise that a lie gives out like the pulse of a trap like the rainbow that cuts off a hand like a psychic intent full of negative calls like salt for the season that covers the fields with jail like the round word that a star pisser pulls like the plains that a crossed out calendar day will mourn like the fate of the wrong side of talking like hills under snow that a letter revolves like the husky reflections of leeches that writhe like a sword in Toledo like the animals growing a vent in a cage like the sequence of nights dropping straw for a cipher like the trade in the fair full of cycles and ends like the cattle that heat all the drains with green grass like the nipples of outdoor intentions like a wing on the door that a glass makes arise like the underground fluid of digitized words like the ice in a cavern like a ride through the green light of dying like the yellowish herd of relational cards like the face that a wallet becomes like the wrong line of radios making a rule like the crust on the last day of hunger like the rodeo riding the real for a cut like the cells in the spread of the fall like an ape for the circle of color like reflections that turn on a wheel like the freezer of sweethearts like a change for the current that makes a return like the pause on the shore full of rattles like the oxygen tent making holes in a lung the face of friendly fire is knotted for a smile deleted for a smile that saves the executioner the face intended jail, by rocking through the holes that fear the clear blue family of dots the face resembles next to nothing in the network full of incremental touches that a string intends to limit by the light the face of arctic evolutions, a hunt that people came to read instead of mapping all the flights of sleep without a sound the face of terrible returns will fade outside the pouring crowd of animal relation in the mineral of wealth the face of providence is making shores for surfers in the foam of magnifying eyes that are the opposite of winter calm the face is never there in each intention that the worst reliance knows to ask for heat the face is after every opening that makes a number count for all of what is good like a robot that falls and makes good for a switch like the breasts of a mop that soaks blood like a magnifying glass for the sun like the picture of radar in space like a misery flood on the phone like electrical laughter that the pointed shake like enemies held in a double embrace like extinctions returning like a handshake of style for the heat like the flower that bottles a fly for a mouth like the still dunes of dust on a beautiful girl like the crack in an oven like a moon that gets brighter with age

defunct list of common names proxy for the bearer nor’wester buffets gear reach into our canisters “Cassirer” drawn and sewn into my lapels assembly of illegal men peril will not know two Roman slaves rain the rage passes through our teeth into interior pneumatic doors my evening of moniker stamped upon boxes of envelopes blank ledger for you “Macquin” with tin and amber stockpiled you prince