my dream about being white
hey music and
me
only white,
hair a flutter of
hey music and
me
only white,
hair a flutter of
they thought the field was wasting
and so they gathered the marker rocks and stones and
piled them into a barn they say that the rocks were shaped
some of them scratched with triangles and other forms they
i would sit in the center of the world,
the Black Hills hooped around me and
dream of my dancing horse. my wife
was Black Shawl who gave me the daughter
the time i dropped your almost body down
down to meet the waters under the city
and run one with the sewage to the sea
what did i know about waters rushing back
somebody coming in blackness
like a star
and the world be a great bush
on his head
for j. byrd
i am a man's head hunched in the road.
i was chosen to speak by the members
of my body. the arm as it pulled away
if mama
could see
she would see
lucy sprawling
these hips are big hips
they need space to
move around in.
they don't fit into little
my sister Josephine
born july in '29
and dead these 15 years
who carried a book
for some
it is stone
bare smooth
as a buttock
a poem in seven parts
1
convent
my knees recall the pockets
curling them around
i hold their bodies in obscene embrace
thinking of everything but kinship.
collards and kale