478 Identity poems

Like all children Mz N lived in archaic mythic zones and all the neighbors and kin played their parts to a T although they never were able to tell her the whole story. § The child Mz N sat on her bed and wondered: that tree outside her window shifted when her eye shifted. What to make of that? § Mz N and her siblings had a dog for some time. They went on vacation & when they came back no dog. They asked the parents: the dog? who replied: what dog? And some people wonder why others distrust the obvious. § One year Mz N began her great project of investigative touch. Like everything it came about through reading and happenstance. Mz N had a friend who said I do it and then I worry what if my roommate hears? What if? Mz N wondered went home and discovered a new octave. § Mz N sometimes thinks what N stands for: Nothing. One day she said nihilism in school & the teacher paused, chalk between her fingers like her longed-for cigarette. What's nīhilism another student said I thought it was neehilism. This was another example of Mz N bringing up topics that went Nowhere. § the blackest black is not so black it cannot take a blacker black so Mz N thinks the void would speak if void could speak or of color think Mz N is writing what she hopes will be a masterpiece:Mispronunciation: the definitive autobiography. She only includes the bloopers she remembers. She is very strict like that. What's vá-gi-na —hard g— she called to her parents age five when they'd plopped her on the sofa with a picture book to help her learn where babies. Some years later she told a story at dinner about being very angry with a persecuting teacher. I spoke she sd with great ve-hé-mence. Her father laughed a somewhat unkind laugh and asked her to repeat it. She did & once again he laughed. Mz N vehemently objects to the making fun of children who struggle every day to get their words and bodies aligned § one day after sex in a century of bad sex the other one asked Mz N did I leave you on the edge never having had an orgasm as far as she knew she sd quite definitively no how would she know such an edge are you sure the other persisted Mz N thought again she could say quite definitively oh yes here I am on the edge where you left me the edge of a certain abyss but this she knew was the answer to a question no one was asking § Mz N embarks one day upon a sonnet attracted by the knowledge that it's dead extinct like dinosaur dodo or bonnet long replaced by baseball caps on heads that centuries ago were piled with curls birds powder wires and such machinery 'twould blow the minds of tattooed boys and girls who cruise the streets of this new century Mz N concedes she's antiquarian old hat old news—"hoarder of ancient dirt" to quote the mouldy Scot John Pinkerton but from her dead-end path she won't divert the airplane made the train a living fossil relict herself she listens for its whistle § Wordsworth never took a plane but Mz N takes a plane with Wordsworth on her mind and other matters: love, fear, a wish to die. Wordsworth had a very sturdy mind and legs that took him far into the mountains, Scottish glens, German towns and yes across the Alps. Mz N has never seen the Alps nor Snowdon nor a mountain anywhere beyond the ancient Adirondacks Wordsworth too she thinks would like their worndown humps their pathless woods the rowboats by the shores of placid lakes ready for exploring. Young Wordsworth stole a rowboat rowed out on a lake one night and found himself appalled the mountain strode sublime after him and he trembled and his mind as Burke had said it would before sublimity near failed. There are passages in life in Wordsworth he called spots of time and Mz N has some spots she sometimes recollects. But now she's happy incredulous in love and in strange anguish wants to recollect nothing.If it were now to die 'twere now to be most happy she murmurs with the engine nearly exploding with the fragility and perverse strength of all that lives and moves and has its being in the air on the ground in the sea. Having reached a floating state of grace, surprised by joy she wants to die life can only get worse the mountain receding below them as they climb

chapter viii Tired    I walk toward everything except fear over seaweed-covered rocks I think that someday some new women will be allowed to see each other happy happy more than usual I looked in all the other open rooms of my heart A vague fear obscured the whole scene into a diorama of ruin As sharp as a sword-cut    the light struck    a half-reclining cloud Time and distance trembled in my body • To become in love with everything apropos of nothing To see without seeming to stare To change in the reflection To appear peculiar • We never refer to sadness as something that looks like secrecy but it does • I drifted on the fresh breeze I did not like it Joy     joy     joy although not joy    a bad thing I can feel it wet against my bosom My journey is mapped and ready I am only taking one dress • I don’t want to talk     of infinitesimal distinctions between man and man     see no difference     between men and maidens I am the modern Morpheus I made the minutes disappear I am thin an errant swarm of bees a naked lunatic faithful selfish old a tiger immensely strong a wild beast a paroxysm of rage mercy murder coming coming coming chapter xiv After a bad night I lock myself in my room and read I had only imagination I remember how on our wedding day    he said I shall never let trouble or nervousness concern you    you can trust me I must not forgive    I cannot I know the real truth now My imagination tinges everything with ill adventure I suppose a cry clears the air    as other rain does • I have a good memory for details it is not always so with young ladies    or so it had been said to me I cannot comprehend this husband Women all their lives are interrupted    considered hysterical summoned to make children for the strong and manly and for his sake must smile and not speak Now this man I began to think a weak fool I had trusted him    my husband even half believed his words when he said I would have an ordinary life    without dread • Let me tell you from experience of men his brain and heart are terrible things This man    impotent in the dark He succeeded in getting me to doubt everything took a hue of unreality I did not trust even my own senses You don’t know what it is to doubt everything    even yourself I am a wife he fashioned by his own hand to be sweet and earnest and so kind • An idea struck me Following great loss     people see things that others cannot Men want to explain explain explain see themselves new    pretend to be young Ladies’ bodies are deemed unholy by the very men who burn them Generations of men believe that women walk amongst them without knowledge My thesis is this I want to believe    to believe to believe in a universe    willing to understand chapter xxi A detail in a pool of blood the body gathered in an awkward kink I dress myself  in easy anything • I softened into a swollen confusion only slightly solid    I was shining He beckoned His hands    a dark mass like a thousand rats A cloud closed over my eyes I moistened myself with brandy I held tight to life I became like water • Kneeling on the edge of the bed    his face was turned his left hand    held both arms    his right gripped my neck    blood    a thin stream of it    his nostrils quivered • I lay in disarray my eyes    and from them came    an endless moment Cold moonshine dazed me    I began to pull on clothes I drew back    unclean Shame folded me like steel    tried to twist me in obedience I could not feel the rise of reddening dawn Silence    the sound of  what happened • I want you to know all this understand    how much I need to show you It was he who caused me to disappear My husband    my husband and other men hunt me and command    my flesh my blood my brain This is my pollution story • The eastern sky became clear as the awful narrative deepened in the morning light when the first red streak shot up my flesh

somewhere, a sun. below, boys brown as rye play the dozens & ball, jump in the air & stay there. boys become new moons, gum-dark on all sides, beg bruise -blue water to fly, at least tide, at least spit back a father or two. I won’t get started. history is what it is. it knows what it did. bad dog. bad blood. bad day to be a boy color of a July well spent. but here, not earth not heaven, boys can’t recall their white shirt turned a ruby gown. here, there is no language for officer or law, no color to call white. if snow fell, it’d fall black. please, don’t call us dead, call us alive someplace better. we say our own names when we pray. we go out for sweets & come back. • this is how we are born: come morning after we cypher/feast/hoop, we dig a new boy from the ground, take him out his treebox, shake worms from his braids. sometimes they’ll sing a trapgod hymn (what a first breath!) sometimes it’s they eyes who lead scanning for bonefleshed men in blue. we say congrats, you’re a boy again! we give him a durag, a bowl, a second chance. we send him off to wander for a day or ever, let him pick his new name. that boy was Trayvon, now called RainKing. that man Sean named himself I do, I do. O, the imagination of a new reborn boy but most of us settle on alive. • sometimes a boy is born right out the sky, dropped from a bridge between starshine & clay. one boy showed up pulled behind a truck, a parade for himself & his wet red gown. years ago we plucked brothers from branches unpeeled their naps from bark. sometimes a boy walks into his room then walks out into his new world still clutching wicked metals. some boys waded here through their own blood. does it matter how he got here if we’re all here to dance? grab a boy, spin him around. if he asks for a kiss, kiss him. if he asks where he is, say gone. • no need for geography now that we’re safe everywhere. point to whatever you please & call it church, home, or sweet love. paradise is a world where everything is a sanctuary & nothing is a gun. here, if it grows it knows its place in history. yesterday, a poplar told me of old forest heavy with fruits I’d call uncle bursting red pulp & set afire, harvest of dark wind chimes. after I fell from its limb it kissed sap into my wound. do you know what it’s like to live someplace that loves you back? • here, everybody wanna be black & is. look — the forest is a flock of boys who never got to grow up, blooming into forever, afros like maple crowns reaching sap-slow toward sky. watch Forest run in the rain, branches melting into paper-soft curls, duck under the mountain for shelter. watch the mountain reveal itself a boy. watch Mountain & Forest playing in the rain, watch the rain melt everything into a boy with brown eyes & wet naps — the lake turns into a boy in the rain the swamp — a boy in the rain the fields of lavender — brothers dancing between the storm. • if you press your ear to the dirt you can hear it hum, not like it’s filled with beetles & other low gods but like a mouth rot with gospel & other glories. listen to the dirt crescendo a boy back. come. celebrate. this is everyday. every day holy. everyday high holiday. everyday new year. every year, days get longer. time clogged with boys. the boys O the boys. they still come in droves. the old world keeps choking them. our new one can’t stop spitting them out. • ask the mountain-boy to put you on his shoulders if you want to see the old world, ask him for some lean -in & you’ll be home. step off him & walk around your block. grow wings & fly above your city. all the guns fire toward heaven. warning shots mince your feathers. fall back to the metal-less side of the mountain, cry if you need to. that world of laws rendered us into dark matter. we asked for nothing but our names in a mouth we’ve known for decades. some were blessed to know the mouth. our decades betrayed us. • there, I drowned, back before, once. there, I knew how to swim but couldn’t. there, men stood by shore & watched me blue. there, I was a dead fish, the river’s prince. there, I had a face & then I didn’t. there, my mother cried over me but I wasn’t there. I was here, by my own water, singing a song I learned somewhere south of somewhere worse. that was when direction mattered. now, everywhere I am is the center of everything. I must be the lord of something. what was I before? a boy? a son? a warning? a myth? I whistled now I’m the God of whistling. I built my Olympia downstream. • you are not welcome here. trust the trip will kill you. go home. we earned this paradise by a death we didn’t deserve. I am sure there are other heres. a somewhere for every kind of somebody, a heaven of brown girls braiding on golden stoops but here — how could I ever explain to you — someone prayed we’d rest in peace & here we are in peace             whole                all summer

Tete sits me down and tells me the story of our ankestors. She says it with a hard K.I squelch my sass, and listen. Our ankestors were hunters, of the zebra totem. There were two brothers and a very beautiful sister, as sweet as a sugar bean. So they called her VaNyemba. They came all the way from Mozambique to this place, tracking wild game. When the chief saw VaNyemba’s beauty, he granted her brothers leave to hunt on his land. They set out to hunt early, leaving VaNyemba to tend the fire. She was very beautiful.              The chief surprised her. She screamed, but her brothers were far, far. He was a heavy man, and as he thrust himself inside her he found her penis. Our VaNyemba hanged her busted bare body. When the chief saw it, he was afraid. He stripped off his regalia and fled, leaving the land to her brothers. That is the land they buried her in. And that is how we came to live in Chihota, the land of sweet potatoes. I am sitting next to Tete, wondering if I will ever eat a sweet potato again.

“Burnished,” when applied to limbs, refers you to furniture, or wood at least, a hint the skin has been burned beyond the human, & then beyond. Necessary for the removal of skin from a burnished limb is an implement sharper rather than duller, wieldy & willing to dig without displacement. The scrape of flint on a burnished limb —if you say “arm” you must mean it— resembles, no doubt, a chisel (of iron?) that furls what’s before it, away. The point of whatever has been lost between the stasis of the burnished limb & its movement away from the rest of what you have identified as skin, the skin of a burnished limb, is to bring to bear the thought of bone & how it relates or, better, responds to its covering uncurling from it flake by flake & amassing, forceless, on the floor, the floor you will describe as cement or concrete, at least rug- and wood-less, the wood being the skin of the burnished limb, until the skin is just another piece of your household furniture.

Imagine half your face rubbed out yet you are suited up and walking to the office. How will your mates greet you? with heavy hearts, flowers, rosary beads? How shall we greet the orphan boy, the husband whose hand slipped, children and wife swept away? How to greet our new years and our birthdays? Shall we always light a candle? Do we remember that time erases the shore, grass grows, pain’s modified? At Hikkaduwa in 1980 I wrote a ditty, a sailor’s song about rain in sunny Ceylon. I don’t know what Calypsonians would compose about this monstrous wave, this blind hatchet man; don’t know the Baila singers’ reply; we are a “happy and go” people yet the fisherman’s wife knows that her grandfather was eaten by the ocean— fisher communities have suffered in time and what’s happened now is just another feast for that bloody, sleeping mother lapping at our island; but what if the ocean were innocent, the tectonic plates innocent, what if God were innocent? * I do not know how to walk upon the beach, how to lift corpse after corpse until I am exhausted, how to stop the tears when half my face has been rubbed out beyond the railroad tracks and this anaesthetic, this calypso come to the last verse. What shall we write in the sand? Where are gravestones incinerated? Whose ashes are these urned and floating through a house throttled by water? Shall we build a memorial some calculated distance from the sea, in a park, in the shape of a giant wave where we can write the names of the dead? Has the wave lost its beauty? Is it now considered obscene? * Yet tomorrow we must go to the ocean and refresh ourselves in the sea breeze down in Hikkaduwa where it is raining in sunny Ceylon. Tomorrow, we must renew our vows at sunrise, at sunset. Let us say the next time the ocean recedes and parrots gawk and flee, and restless dogs insist their humans wake up, we will not peer at the revelation of the ocean bed, nor seek photographs. We will run to higher ground, and gathered there with our children, our cats, dogs, pigs, with what we’ve carried in our hands —albums, letters— we will make a circle, kneel, sit, stand in no particular direction, pray and be silent, open our lungs and shout thanks to our gods thanks to our dogs.

They look at the photo and agree that’s dad in the class photo of Ip Man, Wing Chun master. I look at the face and cannot say it looks like him to me. My brother asked his forensics detective coworker to look at the face. Mom thinks it’s him too, he says proudly. My mother often watches game shows and says look it looks like (insert neighbor) and I look up to see some not-even-ballpark bone structure. What was my father’s face like when he left his country? What was his face like when, alone, he made the pork and peas, washed socks. This wretched neighborhood, when I say hi to white people on the street they don’t say hi back. Chinese either. Who has mastered this face, no sweeping lashes, just one naked thought after another. The young people I think I smile at in a dark crowd who walk away as if my face said,You’re standing in my way move along. I’d dress as Robert Smith or The Crow in high school and friends would say,But you look normal that way. I mention my Han melancholy and you murmur,No,Grandpa told Uncle DiDi we’re Mongolian, I thought you knew? You who had permission to deck any lump on the bus, who got asked later,Are you okay? I walk down the street feeling overly safe, I dgaf and want to magic you my extra. But my face fails me with a weak best, what friends know as “powered-
down mode.” What in the world is she thinking is what I sometimes ask myself, says a colleague about this face. What I partly see, what partly disappears in the mirror.

There is a face I know too well, A face I dread to see, So vain it is, so eloquent Of all futility. It is a human face that hides A monkey soul within, That bangs about, that beats a gong, That makes a horrid din. Sometimes the monkey soul will sprawl Athwart the human eyes, And peering forth, will flesh its pads, And utter social lies. So wretched is this face, so vain, So empty and forlorn, You well may say that better far This face had not been born.

I have seen a face with a thousand countenances, and a face that was but a single countenance as if held in a mould. I have seen a face whose sheen I could look through to the ugliness beneath, and a face whose sheen I had to lift to see how beautiful it was. I have seen an old face much lined with nothing, and a smooth face in which all things were graven. I know faces, because I look through the fabric my own eye weaves, and behold the reality beneath.

I lived a long time as both woman and girl it nearly killed me I don’t want an ordinary moment any longer no more gestures Such as the oaks neither shake nor fidget in observation And the objects worth discussing dissipate oh how they leak Away from the creeds claiming one can get ahead of the pain By naming see how the green will change you it really will I went into the green with a vine across my back and from the mud Came the pattern before the light could enter light turned And denied us, the moss struggled toward the yellow A fine pollen came up from the world and the road made this Shape in the powder: What’s wrong with right here? There’s a cape behind my eyes and the body inside it wallows Across patches of burned up grass untender and lines perpendicular To the gate I couldn’t open an outrage regularly loiters Isn’t that weird, how talent carries time? Nothing’s resolved today and the hours are dim but vital A body in a cloak upon a road rolling sweetly through the mind Place this road in some distant future just like that foregone past And then offensively remember how women don’t exist Get head of the pain the ages counsel, make plenty of money