Shake Loose My Skin (7 page)

is the voice of Antoine.

Darryl. Shaquille.

Running over waters

navigating the hallways

of our schools spilling out

on the corners of our cities and

no epitaphs spill out of their river mouths.

This is not a small love
you hear      this is a large

love, a passion for kissing learning
on its face.

This is a love that crowns the feet with hands
that nourishes, conceives, feels the water sails
mends the children,

folds them inside our history where they

toast more than the flesh

where they suck the bones of the alphabet

and spit out closed vowels.

This is a love colored with iron and lace.

This is a love initialed Black Genius.

This is not a small voice
you hear.

Listening to the News

Like

All i did was
go down on him
in the middle of
the dance floor
cuz he is a movie
star he is a blk/
man “live” rt off
the screen fulfilling
my wildest dreams.

Like.

Yeah. All i did
was suck him in tune
to
that’s the way love goes
while boogeying feet
stunning thighs pressed
together in rhythm cuz he
wanted it and i wanted
to be seen with him
cuz he’s in the movies on the
big screen bigger than life
bigger than all of my
hollywood dreams
cuz see
i need to have my say
among all the unsaid
lives i deal with.

Like.
Yeah.

i have died and dreamed
myself back to your arms where
what i died for sleeps.

the sprawling sound
of my death sails on the wind
a white butterfly.

the day he traveled to my daughter’s house

it was june. he cursed me with his morning nod

of anger as he filtered his callous

walk. skip. hop. feet slipshod

from 125th street bars, face curled with odd

reflections. the skin of a father is accented

in the sentence of the unaccented.

i was a southern Negro man playing music

married to a high yellow woman who loved my unheard

face, who slept with me in nordic

beauty. i prisoner since my birth to fear

i unfashioned buried in an open grave

of mornings unclapped with constant sight

of masters fattened decked with my diminished light.

this love. this first wife of mine, died in childbirth

this face of complex lace exiled her breath

into another design, and i died became wanderlust

demanded recompense from friends for my heartbreak

cursed the land for this new heartache

put her away with a youthful pause

never called her name again, wrapped my heart in gauze.

became romeo bound, applauded women
as i squeezed their syrup, drank their stenciled
face, danced between their legs, placed my swollen
shank to the world, became man distilled
early twentieth-century black man fossilled
fulfilled by women things, foreclosing on my life.
mother where do i go before i arrive?

she wasn’t as beautiful as my first wife
this ruby-colored girl insinuating her limb
against my thigh positioning her wild-life
her non-virginal smell as virginal her climb
towards me with slow walking heels made me limp
made me stumble, made my legs squint
until i stopped, stepped inside her footprint.

i did not want to leave you son, this flame

this pecan-colored festival requested me

not my child, your sister. your mother could not frame

herself as her mother and i absentee

father, and i nightclub owner carefree

did not heed her blood, did not see my girl’s eyes

shaved buckled down with southern thighs.

now my seventy-eight years urge me on your land
now my predator legs prey, broadcast
no new nightmares no longer birdman
of cornerstone comes, i come to collapse the past
while bonfires burn up your orphan’s mask
i sing a dirge of lost black southern manhood
this harlem man begging pardon, secreting old.

i was told i don’t remember who

i think i was told he entered his sister’s house

cursed me anew, tried to tattoo

her tongue with worms, tried to arouse

her slumbering veins to espouse

his venom and she leaned slapped him still

stilled his mouth across early morning chill.

rumor has it that he slapped her hard

down purgatorial sounds of caress

rumor has it that he rushed her down a boulevard

of mad laughter while his hands grabbed harness—

like her arms and she, avenger and she heiress

to naked lightning, detonated him, began her dance

of looted hems gathering together for his inheritance.

blood the sound of blood paddling down the road

blood the taste of blood choking their eyes

and my son’s body blood-stained red

with country-lies, city-lies, father-lies, mother-lies,

and my daughter clamoring to exorcise

old thieves trespassing in an old refrain

conjured up a blue-black chord to ordain.

wa ma ne ho mene so oo
oseee yei, oseee yei, oseee yei
wa ma ne ho mene so oo

he has become holy as he walks toward daresay
can you hear his blood tissue ready to pray
he who wore death discourages any plague
he who was an orphan now recollects his legs.

wa ma ne ho mene so oo:
he is arising in all his majesty
oseee yei:
a shout of praise

i dreamt i was tangoing with

you, you held me so close

we were like the singing coming off the drums.

you made me squeeze muscles

lean back on the sound

of corpuscles sliding in blood.

i heard my thighs singing.

(for you)

love between us is

speech and breath. loving you is

a long river running.

i thought about you
the pain of not having
you cruising my bones.
no morning saliva smiles this
frantic fugue about no you.

let me be yo wil
derness let me be yo wind
blowing you all day.

am i yo philly

outpost? man when you sail in
to my house, you docked.

my womb is a dance
of leaves sweating swift winds
i laugh with guitars.

(for Tupac)

1.

we smell the
wounds hear the
red vowels
from your tongue.

the old ones
say we don’t
die we are
just passing
through into
another space.

i say they
have tried to
cut out your
heart and eat
it slowly.

we stretch our
ears to hear
your blood young
warrior.

2.

where are your fathers?
i see your mothers gathering
around your wounds folding
your arms shutting
your eyes wrapping you in prayer.

where are the fathers?
zootsuited eyes dancing
their days away.
what have they taught you
about power and peace.

where are the fathers

strutting their furlined

intellect bowing their

faces in the crotch

of academia and corporations

burying their tongues

in lunchtime pink

and black pussies

where are the fathers to teach

beyond stayinschooluse

acondomstrikewhilethe

iron’shotkeephopealive.

where have the fathers buried their voices?

3.

whose gold is carrying you home?
whose wealth is walking you through
this urban terror? whose greed
left you shipwrecked with golden
eyes staring in sudden death?

4.

you were in
a place hot
at the edge
of our minds.
you were in
a new world
a country
pushing with
blk corpses
distinct with
paleness and
it swallowed
you whole.

5.

i will not
burp you up.
i hold you
close to my heart.

Why?

You asking me why I’m moving. You reporters are something else you know. Why do you think? I was gonna tough it out. Thought all of this commotion would die down. Thought the people living here could understand a woman, a mother wanting to give her children a better life. Look. All I’m looking for is a nice house for my kids. A safe place to bring them up.

What?

What do I think about my neighbors? These people. These people who have sprayed the word
nigger
on my door. These people who finally threatened my children. My children did you hear me? Have you ever held a child in your arms while she shook her insides out? She was so scared I cried her to sleep. How do you ever tell a child again that she’s safe? Huh?

What do I think of these people? Huh? What should anyone think? What should you reporters think? What should the city think? What should the mayor think? What should the country think?

A woman came to my door yesterday and said these people here wasn’t bad. They was just concerned about their neighborhood. They had worked so hard so they didn’t want it messed up with people who didn’t know what it meant to live in a decent neighborhood. She said they keep their neighborhood clean. She said they had no crime in their streets. She said they keep their houses clean. She said they keep their children clean. She said they keep themselves clean. She said there were no bad guys here. Just people protecting their neighborhood and property.

Huh? Did she say clean? Clean? You wanna see clean? Do you wanna see my floors? They so clean you could eat offa them. And I scrub my children. I scrub them every day. Hard. So hard that some of the black almost come offa them. But it don’t you know. Hee hee.

What do you guys want me to do? Huh? Call them names too? My God won’t let me do that. My God won’t let me become indecent like them. My God. . . . And I don’t know how their God can let them do what they do.

What do you guys think about her saying “There ain’t no bad guys here”? Am I the bad guy for wanting to move into a place I can afford? Am I the bad guy for being black and female and a single woman with three children? Am I the bad guy because I don’t look like them?

What do you think? They look like y’all. You know they could be your mommas and fathers. Your sisters and brothers. You know. But you know what I really can’t figure out? It’s their eyes. I can’t figure out what to make about their eyes and mouths so framed with hatred. Their tongues full of worms you know. Their bodies anxious to do damage to children’s eyes. Their hands poised to paint obscenities; their thumbs curled to hurl stones at my windows.

Huh?

What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do? I’m gonna move in with my mama. She lives in Mt. Airy. I’ll probably stay with her for a while. Try to figure out where else to go. Where else I can live. What do you think I should do? Huh? You got a house in your neighborhood I can move into? You got a house for a respectable hard-working, underpaid black woman who can buy a house on her own?