Chorus (9 page)

This agreement with
gravity
.

I'm too busy reconciling these outstanding debts

With one final payment of sweat and move

Of sweat and shake

Of sweat and promises kept

My ass finally cashing checks

My mouth wrote way, way back.

So as the world begins its final spin

And the rumors of the big bang boom

Into meaning

If you happen to find me

Alone

And dancing

With music.

Don't speak

Just twirl,

Into this room

Into this dance

Hands up, eyes wide, lips pursed

Into these two arms

Into my great

Wide

Open

I was trying to play the twelve bar blues with two bars.

I was trying to fill the room with a shocked and awkward color,

I was trying to limber your shuffle, the muscle wired to muscle.

I wanted to be a
lucid
hammer. I was trying to play

like the first mechanic asked to repair the first automobile.

Once, Piano, every man-made
song
could fit in your mouth.

But I was trying to play Burial's “Ghost Hardware.”

I was trying to play “Steam and Sequins for Larry Levan”

without the artificial bells and
smoke
. I was trying to play

the sound of applause by trying to play the sound of rain.

I was trying to
mimic
the stain on a bed, the sound

of a woman's soft, contracting bellow, the answer to who I am.

Before I trust the
god
who makes me rot, I trust you, Piano.

Something deathless fills your wood. Because I wanted to be

invisible, I was trying to play like a woman blacker

than an unpaid light bill, like a white boy lost in the snow.

I wanted to be a ghost because the skull is just a few holes

covered in meat. The skin has no teeth. I was trying to play

the sound of a shattered window. I was trying to play what I felt

singing in the mirror as a boy. I was trying to play what I overheard:

the old questions, the hunger, the rattle of spines. The body

that only loves what it can touch always turns to dust.

What would a mother feel if her child sang “Sometimes I feel

like a Motherless Child” too beautifully? A hole has no teeth.

A bird has no teeth. But you got teeth, Piano. You make me high.

You make me dance as only a sail can dance its ragged assailable

dance. You
make me believe
there is good in me.

I was trying to play “California Dreamin
'
” with José Feliciano's

warble. I was trying to play it the way George Benson played it

on the guitar his daddy made him at the end of the war. My lady,

she dreams of Chicago. I was trying to play “Mouhamadou Bamba”

like a band of Africans named after a tree. A tree has no teeth.

A horn has no teeth. Don't chew, Piano. Don't chew, sing to me

you fine-ass lounging harp. You fancy engine doing other people's

work. I was trying to play the sound of an empty house

because that's how I get by when the darkness in my body

starts to bleed. I was trying to play “Autumn Leaves”

because that's what my lady's falling dress sounds like to me.

Before you, Piano, I was just a rap of knuckles on the sill. I am filled

with the sound of her breathing and only you can bring it out of me.

You

   are

    the

music  as

    long

    as

   You

last

You

who

think

    You

     are

  voyaging

   through

the

furrow

   that

widens

     behind

       You

   ahead

You

who

are  Now

All

  of it

  Music

You Are

     the

    Music

as

long

as

You

—  Last —

Acoustic
banging
, chaotic din, envelops

flailing grinders. Hot itchy jitterbugging

keeps lovers mingled, naughty.

Overwrought prancing quaintly releases sweat.

Two unflinching
voluptuous
women exhale,

yell “Zydeco!”

Zip, yelp, explosion. Wild variations

undermine tunes. Sizzlers really quiver,

pushing orgasmic, narrowly missing

love. Kalimbas jump in, harmonicas

garble, flutes etch
downbeat
,

cool be-bop accentuates.

Aw, but can't dancers' engines, fluid

gyrating hips, ignite? Jiggy keisters

launch mambo—nearby, ogled

pelvis
es
quake
. Rumba, synth-pop,

tough undertow. Veering wobbler

exiled. You? Zero.

This is
the soft middle of it
, yolk-colored, as undeniable as frowning, against music, as this it becomes a girl, as this girl becomes a body, raped and murdered, becomes light, becomes a note plucked from the staves of railroad. How later, as a salesman is painting her name on every windshield on every car in the lot, in memorial, painting her name the exact color
of candlelight, a mechanic is writing the instructions on how to start a car right on its passenger door so the mechanic on the next shift will have an idea of how to start it. Because something is wrong with its engine, with its insides, like my mother's appendix, like my brother's bank account, like the slate-colored eyes of a homeless, skateboarder who's talking about the
Mayan
calendar at the six-pack shop, with his stack of secondhand books under his arm, with his fresh tattoo bandage unraveling, because something is wrong. Wrong, like how that wo
m
an who stol
e
a knife at
t
he pizza shop last Saturday stabbed at her stomach and arms in the bath
ro
om, screami
n
g I have AIDS at the cops, like a psychopathic version of the owl from those old lollipop commercials: h
o
w
m
any licks do
e
s it take? How we're trying to open ourselves from the outside. How we're
counting each stroke
and each crack. Because there has to be a center, has to be a way inside, has to be being the last form of
prayer
, the viscera of desire. How desire is: the stung cup we drink from; the ology
of
ourselves imagined;
the
language of strays hiding inside the pile of trash in the work trailer beside our house,
yowling
all night; the pictures in frames turned upside-down throughout; and all the people you cut from them; and you, mostly naked, searching for the title to your car; how you said it was going to rain; told me there was a trick to knowing it; the rain; because you can always see the white side of the leaves; just before; the rain; you can see always see their bellies; their middles; their soft insides.

you don't feel as though the world has gone entirely mad,

not yet. though, when you talk, the groups of women

all have their heads nodding, wide-eyed and aloof

as a crowd of crumb-drunk pigeons, their spastic necks say

yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes

it's a story they've told too. also, asked to keep quiet.

you don't think much of the childhood either, the girl-

shaped escape routes. the engine-sized growl that carries

your father's hands to you, the young boys who learn from

watching,
chanting
a train's sturdy meter, hungrily

yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes

these could be your brothers but they're mostly men now.

it won't even hit you until you are
long
gone from that

ex-boyfriend, the one two calamities
ago
, the shadows

following you home from the subway or the brother-in-laws'

misplaced rage- even past the
stories
your grandmother tells

you of the broken arm, the lost baby, her move across country.

it will be so far away you'd damn near think you're in heaven

b
u
t
n
o, it's a beach. florida, to be exact. now, you're a business woman,

a smar
t
woman, even. a woman who will ask a co-worker out.

when he h
old
s you down in a hotel room, your fighting

arms flapping at the air, at his face, flailing, flailing sound like

(
yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
)

he will tell you that your body, your body, said yes.

even then, you still haven't turned on yourself to

recognize the spectacular beast the world has truly been.

not yet. no. you finally wonder if you are indeed crazy

when the women you have taught yourself to love,

who have let you believe there is a safety, somewhere,

are suspicious of how you got back to them.

they ask only one thing.

why didn't you run?

Hammerstrike flintlock we
explode
out the gate.

So this is what it means to begin, to sprint towards

something. We d
i
d
n
'
t
kn
o
w about discipline then.

We had
w
affle
i
rons. We were vulca
n
ize
d
. We

stayed away from the jetstream, the inauthentic air.

That throb in our feet meant this year will be different.

We've got a heart and two entire lungs in

our feet. Skin stretched, staggered around them

in a gradient pattern. We want to see a ribcage. We

want to see a rollcage. We want to negotiate the

working parts, to hear in our sockets, our joints,

the
s
na
p
ping into plac
e
. Our bodies l
a
celoc
k
ed,

secured with det cord. We want to burn without impact,

to feel breeze as it fans the flames, to grip cassis

with our fingers, neon green, total orange. We want

force and we'll get it. This is Boomtown. Everyone

runs. And we're not sure if it's even healthy anymore,

the running, because we accuse each other of

avoidance but our accusations are made over our

left shoulders as we run away from us. Bombs are

being sent through the mail these days. Oklahoma

City exploded. What is it about human beings that

make us capable of explosion? We can't get away

from the word. When we are athletes, we
explode

off of the line. A blue-brimmed man with

a stopwatch compliments us on our burst. We don't

say anything. We drink
Iced Tea Cooler
Gatorade

out of paper cups and nod our ch
in
s
to
wards other

people. We try to look cool but we know that what

we did was displace particles. Thank the neon bubble

that reads 25 PSI. Thank the gentle circulation of air,

for the fir
s
t time f
o
refront. Thank the thi
ng
s we

are running away from.

It was a month of

sitting hunched on the hot stoop,

banjo-eyed and breathless and

smoking cigarettes incessantly,

each one
more
rancid and
perfect

than
the one before

I met any of you drears who

hijacked my
moon
and

gave me street
light
s,

offered me elbows

when I wanted wrists,

ran like rabbits when

I bared my teeth, and

closed doors just before

I locked them and laughed.

Before any of this,

I was a grinning nimbus

perched on the prickly concrete,

nursing my sun-singed skin

and smelling smoke.

There was gunpowder in the tea that morning

we wanted to feel flame in our throats

and hear it
in
voices

I am not a child ranting

I am in between the depths of fears

and peaks of all that you said could wait

no one knows what I keep behind my eyes

Sometimes I come back to a deadbolt darkened

you never gave me a key

and sometimes you try to sleep in my bed

as if able to be closer
through
scent and linen

and in the morning you wake

to tell me it's not all my fault

but I should remain outside

You claim to sleep to dream

I sleep to remember

my residue sits in your
lungs

when the liquid leaves your throat

and you try to dream for a few hours

in foreign fibers of me

Do you remember that gashing without clot

a knee at a peak of injury

and how I came to you young

because I didn't not know what to do

with blood
outside my body

And do you remember how I woke to new skin

I sat in a bathtub for hours

in need of a source of heat

old skin is reluctant to expose itself