Here comes the train.
That's where it's going.
“Tequila is a pallid flame that passes through walls and soars over tile roofs to allay despair.”
     Â
â
Alvaro Mutis
Sergio was for no shit
that night. He was serving
up the blade juice, heavy-handed,
the sugary gold
sloshing over the tops
of much-thumbed tumblers.
Story was he rinsed
his glasses in gin to make sure
the germs were dead.
Well, no matter. That night
he was pinpoint focused
on laying his regulars flat
with fountains of Cuervo,
free for the time being
because he said it was.
The open mic,
an odd parade of eggshells
and desperadoes, had limped
to its usual anticlimax,
each poet duly convinced
that his lines had leapt
from the cocktail napkin,
sliced through the din,
and changed Chicago.
Now, no more
of those bare offerings,
florid lyrics of tomorrow and gray.
The doors were locked.
The
M.C.
was atilt, souvenir bras
dripped from the ceiling
and the Johns smelled like snow.
This was world enough,
a timed blathering of our sad biographies,
Playtex as décor,
and an overwrought
of fever water spewing
from the grimy hands
of an insane Mexican barkeep.
When we slowed,
choking on the bitter kick
as he poured and poured,
Serge bellowed a thick-tongued
threat:
This ain't no joke. Drink,
you motherfuckers.
He waved a sudden gun,
a clunky thing that sparked
snickers until he blasted
a hole in the ceiling and
revised our endings,
smalling our big drunken lives.
for all my mamas
delta teach me the sound
my heart makes when it
bends over backwards
to curse at its beat delta got
church stuffed in size 16,
carrying my gottahave milk,
telling me that i can make my
ownself feel good
     Â
just
when i'm thinking it might
take a man to make me feel
natural
delta teach me fatback,
skillet bread, hogshead,
alaga, drive me crazy with
warm grease, fatten me up
so that i can find
my second mouth
when my living be broken
delta help me find the piece
that can still shout the little bit
that can still squeeze into
a shiny thing and go downtown
where you can
sing about it, girl, sing about it,
pray hard over it, lean into it,
work with it, fry that thang up,
flip it, cut it loose, set fire
to it, turn it over, turn it out,
make it beg, go down on it,
call it sugar out loud, get wide
for it, lie to it, lie for it, lie
with it, but baby, don't let it kill you.
delta let me rub her throat
while she sing she
three-weave her fingers
while she sing she
wiggle like revelation
while she sing she
peel back my grinning
show everybody that lie
she find underneath there
she rip out the hooks
that man done left in my skin
ignores my pained wailing
bleeds
   Â
me
delta sponge me down with
pan water dab cheap smellgood
on my shattered shoulders
call me sista when she have to
baby when she want to
and fool most of the time
delta drive her mouth all over me
feeds me pure butter from a
teaspoon make me come like i
never have then she sing me some
aspirin she sing me edged hooch. she
ignores all those eyes. she take me
so dancing
for Raymond Wood Jr., 1994â1995
I was a foot tall, charming, tot stupid,
bump stumbling, a rumble lump of less
than future. It took me minutes to die,
my self blurring and curled like a comma
in leaving, Newport stubs damp candles
in my hair. Rayie Wood Jr., pesky shard
in the hip of the world. Why else would
you lift me above your head, slam me
to tile, lift me up again by my legs, swing
me against the closed door wicked enough
to splinter Wood, call me sugary names,
oh so sweet bastard me? But I thank you
father for the patient teaching of screech,
for drenching my one tooth in blood.
Thank you daddyman, for the alphabet
of the floorboards, thank you mother
for the live matches against me. Thank
you
SHUT
father for the ripe
THE FUCK
UP
loving in your mouth, thank you for
YOU LITTLE
the slam and the smash me
BASTARD
and for the bounce and the
rattle, for the drama of cut beginning.
How else would I learn the huge love in
red hiss kisses, the shining purpose of me?
for Ella Fitzgerald
A lyric unravels,
spins on dizzied axis,
one syllable slinks
and becomes several.
A stark shaft of light
illuminates a never-over evolution.
Each exhalation
excites and concludes
with a slight upturn
of phrase that compromises
the hip, roots fat legs,
lends such southern heave to torso.
Mysteries thrive in the belly
and in the miraculous
of her throating,
send two errant verbs
round 'bout themselves
and into the keys
of her spine again.
It is not for us to know
her trilling suddenly
murderous and cringe
beautiful, inbound.
Her legs gone.
A lack of this elegance
is the end of evolution.
Consider the soundless hole.
Over.
Imagine my disgust at discovering that I am
actually that readable and uncomplicated,
that I could find nothing in me worth noting
except one heat and two ways to release it.
Music leads to sex leads to music leads to sex.
If it wasn't for the clock of music imitating
the pulse of sexing someone, I could forego
this lapdance in my own lap. There's no need
for that sliver of ice, those chilly silver utensils,
the banshee howl, that two-way mirror,
the pliable circle of the mouth, Todd Rundgren's
Healing,
that spread-eagle, the lazy drip of any
liquid, the ritual reading of Sharon Olds, that
imprint of your urgent ass marring my wall.
I can blame you on all this, your drumbeat hip,
what writhes in your pants. I can't stop sparking
what I keep having to douse. Kiss me that deep.
Turn the air into victim with your arms.
Dance me till weeping and the beauteous burn.
for John Coltrane, and forever for Bruce
I always shudder when I pray.
Mama say the Lord enters you in stages,
first like a match lit under your skin,
then like an animal biting through bone
with soft teeth. Mama say lie still
and wait for glory to consume you,
wrap its way into your map
like a lover had his finger on paradise,
knew the way with all his heart, then lost it.
I always shudder when I pray,
so your name must be a prayer.
Saying your name colors my mouth,
frees loose this river, changes my skin,
turns my spine to string. I pray all the time now.
Amen.
Try not to touch me while I tell this.
Try not to brush the thick tips of your fingers
against my throat while my throat moves
telling this story. Don't suddenly squeeze
my bare shoulder or travel your mouth
along the flat swell of my belly.
Don't bite at the hollow in my back,
whisper touch my ankles,
or match our skin like spoons.
Don't punctuate this rambling sentence
with your tongue or trace your name
on the backs of my legs,
please don't walk the question
of your breath along my thighs
or draw a map on my quivering breastbone
guiding me to you,
me to you,
me to you,
don't play me
that way
don't play me
that way
the way the saxman plays his woman,
blowing into her mouth till she cries,
allowing her no breath of her own.
Don't play me that way, baby, the way
the saxman plays his lady,
that strangling, soft murderânotes like bullets,
riffs like knives and the downbeat slapping
into her.
and she sighs.
into her.
and she cries.
into her.
and she whines like the night turning.
Let me sit here on the bar stool sipping something bitter.
Let me cross my legs,
slow
like the colored girls do,
and let me feel your eyes go there.
Let me feed on glory and grow fat.
Meanwhile, lover, let's fill this wicked church with music.
Let me lean into this story, for once,
without your mouth on me. The music a lit match
under my skin and I dance,
all legs and thunderous and heels too high,
I dance cheap perfume and black nail polish.
Sharkskin congregation, heads
pressed,
attitudes too tight, won't scream
until it gets to be too much, won't beg for mercy
until I wreck the landscape with my hips.
Bar stools filling, everybody waiting for the glory
to move through me, fill me with hosannas,
rock me with hallelujahs, to shake these bored bones.
They wait for you, supreme love, to pull me out
onto the dance floor, make me kick my heels above my head.
High heels 'bove my nappy head.
While they wait, I will dance with the saxman,
I will shimmer as he presses my keys.
Him and me boppin', we are
wicked
church.
So don't play, do not play, did you hear me tell you