anti-bird, mechanical american,   
you, without a name in my tongue,  
    
how come when I look at you I see myself 
as a desert-dweller    

whilst hovering above the city
where I live, you

reduce to sand,     
powerful hand     

taker of lives
where there is hardly any water,

from this water-land
I address you thirstily,

you don’t answer, extension
of what is less nameless

all the more undetectable   
and therefore as monopolic as    

death, where is your bzzzzzzz

when I close the curtains, turn off
the light tonight, which makes me sleep-

less, to all appearances recover
for yet another day

being of value in this desert-
economy, which you,

demiurge, high up
above us, grains, create and oversee?

Let’s make a movie called Dinosaurs in the Hood.
Jurassic Park meets Friday meets The Pursuit of Happyness.
There should be a scene where a little black boy is playing
with a toy dinosaur on the bus, then looks out the window
& sees the T. Rex, because there has to be a T. Rex.

Don’t let Tarantino direct this. In his version, the boy plays
with a gun, the metaphor: black boys toy with their own lives,
the foreshadow to his end, the spitting image of his father.
Fuck that, the kid has a plastic Brontosaurus or Triceratops
& this is his proof of magic or God or Santa. I want a scene

where a cop car gets pooped on by a pterodactyl, a scene
where the corner store turns into a battle ground. Don’t let
the Wayans brothers in this movie. I don’t want any racist shit
about Asian people or overused Latino stereotypes.
This movie is about a neighborhood of royal folks –

children of slaves & immigrants & addicts & exiles – saving their town
from real-ass dinosaurs. I don’t want some cheesy yet progressive
Hmong sexy hot dude hero with a funny yet strong commanding
black girl buddy-cop film. This is not a vehicle for Will Smith
& Sofia Vergara. I want grandmas on the front porch taking out raptors

with guns they hid in walls & under mattresses. I want those little spitty,
screamy dinosaurs. I want Cicely Tyson to make a speech, maybe two.
I want Viola Davis to save the city in the last scene with a black fist afro pick
through the last dinosaur’s long, cold-blood neck. But this can’t be
a black movie. This can’t be a black movie. This movie can’t be dismissed

because of its cast or its audience. This movie can’t be a metaphor
for black people & extinction. This movie can’t be about race.
This movie can’t be about black pain or cause black people pain.
This movie can’t be about a long history of having a long history with hurt.
This movie can’t be about race. Nobody can say nigga in this movie

who can’t say it to my face in public. No chicken jokes in this movie.
No bullets in the heroes. & no one kills the black boy. & no one kills
the black boy. & no one kills the black boy. Besides, the only reason
I want to make this is for that first scene anyway: the little black boy
on the bus with a toy dinosaur, his eyes wide & endless


                                                  his dreams possible, pulsing, & right there.

“20.-Turn around and the sky opens its mouth. You have disappeared among us. This is a book that does not exist. We’ve got you surrounded. Sky and death. Sky and blood. Perfection and pain. We are yours when you believe you’re devouring us. We are yours with our mouths closed. Instruments of your phonation. We do not differentiate. We jump through the hoop of the sky. We are space and we are surface. The sky has a body that walks. The path has been covered in blood.”

This afternoon when, in full sun,
I found myself a body,
 
hair turned long,
loops grew beneath skirts.
 
I wondered what it meant
 
when no rope can find its knots,
when wood unravels,
and we are late, but lost.
 
Years lay between us.
A woman has borne children
and swapped houses.
 
This afternoon,
when the flesh grew on my bones
and the sea rose to the flood line,
 
I wondered where the waves led.
 
Coils were rewound.
I felt entirely absent,
looked at the back of who I was.
 
This afternoon lives were rounded off,
cats licked one another clean.
It was a tender moment.
 
We pulled out each other’s hair.
Unexpectedly the past returned.
 
This afternoon
a smile fell
like glass between the ropes.
 
I circle around you.

I paint cats’ paws,
set the beacons out.
The face consists of hollows,
the body of deficiency.
 
Like this, I want
to be around you.

you prefer the corner, the hidden place
the foliage, the shadow, the room, this
sack of wheat: textual gold
spread out on the old secretaire of the real

outside the blaze of the wood
the quick glazing of the fields
here inside, less leeway – another

panorama: simply the presence
uninhabited by a person, mystery without
attribute or function

always the undoing of a heart
the industrial cultivation of figures
and leftover sadness and days for the body that writes
in the calaboose of a vast morning

radiant with drops of honey
as the cats lick Saturday
and sitting, like a gold frog, you let yourself add to the world
(but why) another poem

Have forgotten
The name like the horses
For the things on which the cups
On the shelf back there in the drive
Am standing naked
Hair loose am wearing your ring
A man coming each day
Like a what are they called
Wants to weigh me little one
Strokes across my cheek I think
Murderer you thief you leave that you
Please continue never stopping
Am smelling of arnica old woman
They call to me I ask them
who do you mean by that
Am standing naked in the driveway
Have forgotten

The meek inherit nothing.
God in his tattered coat
this morning, a quiet tongue

in my ear, begging for alms,
cold hands reaching up my skirt.
Little lamb, paupered flock,

bless my black tea with tears.
I have shorn your golden
fleece, worn vast spools

of white lace, glittering jacquard,
gilded fig leaves, jeweled dust
on my skin. Cornsilk hair

in my hems. I have milked
the stout beast of what you call America;
and wear your men across my chest

like furs. Stick-pin fox and snow-
blue chinchilla: They too came
to nibble at my door,

the soft pink tangles I trap
them in. Dear watchers in the shadows,
dear thick-thighed fiends. At ease,

please. Tell the hounds who undress
me with their eyes – I have nothing
to hide. I will spread myself

wide. Here, a flash of muscle. Here,
some blood in the hunt. Now the center
of the world: my incandescent cunt.

All hail the dark blooms of amaryllis
and the wild pink Damascus,
my sweet Aphrodite unfolding

in the kink. All hail hot jasmine
in the night; thick syrup
in your mouth, forked dagger

on my tongue. Legions at my heel.
Here at the world’s red mecca,
kneel. Here Eden, here Bethlehem,

here in the cradle of Thebes,
a towering sphinx roams the garden,
her wet dawn devouring.