When U-God from Wu-Tang said, You ain’t heard

us in a minute, rap spoke straight to God.

When I broke bread, it was a syrup sandwich.

I licked all the body off my nails.

I saw two birds stalking a basketball court,

rivaling a confirmation when they spotted

buckled asphalt and saw a growing squall

go smooth. And when they dove to break the surface—

a reconciliation. I said to God, Just watch

the demonstration every night. You’ll see

blackness kept in its station. I saw peace,

one time, in fuchsia dusk—a fair tomorrow.

And I saw dusk that plagiarized my one

and only prayer—

Hallelujah. I’m ready

to go searching for that mysterious dark

when nightfall proves to be empty before

the heavens turn red from the fire.

When God gave Ten Commandments—thou

shalt not do any work; must keep

it holy; honor father, mother;

never covet wife nor ox nor ass—

I heard do work, daughter, wife,his ass off.

Mary said, I deserve a steed for this. The sex

that didn’t need bodies. This swag. No hip

craned nearly out its socket. Not one flex.

Seduction

is when I’m on my knees. My lip

gets licked by Common Whitlow.You gotta get

real comfortable, get both your hands dirty

when thunderstorms play rough with wind. Just let

it kiss you.

I was only half of thirty

when my body had its way with me. Much less

violent than you would think.A kind of shame.

But what is change?

Was I branded a new

woman? Was I a woman yet? I chew

myrrh now to soothe my throat. Feeding, I press

my chest against his mouth and say my name.

My church camp counselors said fucking go

to bed [no names], but they’d just taught us one

more Christian song—

It only takes a spark

to get a fire going—

and we sang

loud as we could. Took in a lobbing pitch

of air. A held-out note. Vibrato good

enough for all the coming grab-ass, good

over-the-shirt action.

I left to go

find that one counselor awake, the one

with weed, listening to Snoop, instructing, Spark

that fat-ass J. God—

by the way he sang

the J’s long a, this guy was hot damn pitch

perfect. Gangsta. He swallowed all the pitch

of the Patuxent night. Made dark look good.

I loved him. Yeah, I told him, boy, let’s go

do this. I took him in the woods. For one

second the moon opened its eye—a spark—

and closed it.

Then he told me he once sang

himself off a bluff. He ordered, Sang, girl, sang,

instead of sing.

Minus a howling pitch,

the wind is only timbre.

Yo, you good?

he said. Me—all swagger and time to go

talk up the story I’d become. The one

who saw the man in the moon hung like a spark

refusing expiration with each spark

of expectations.

Yeah, he did say sang,

I told the girls, when all I did was pitch

myself down in the dirt until all good

and dirty. No story. Just girl. No go.

The fire still went on. And then that one

boy fell right in, a fall leaving just one

hole burned in his windbreaker’s sleeve, the spark

of his embarrassment. The crickets sang,

of course. The lanterns crackled. Light and pitch.

The sounds were unpredictable and good

as we expected. Echoes came to go.

Then the pitch of my skin sang at a vagrant spark

lighting up one spot on my thigh. A good

scar. I can go a week and not touch it.

But when I do, it’s like my finger’s not

fit for feeling. Like everything’s too hot.

Like when you move over a boiling pot

and put your hand on the eye, waiting, and it ought

to burn.

I bet Mary Magdalene, devout

down on her knees, had a thing for her hot palms

on someone else’s tepid feet: the grip,

grit in her nails. The murky basin—alms

for sun-cracked cuticles. A hangnail’s clip.

I saw a Bible, on a pedestal

to hold its weight, closing.I heard its sighs.

A new martyr to canonize.Too full,

I left my finger in it, felt the rise

I get when guys say, Break me off a piece

of that.

When fractured, I can tense, release,

and relax in slow-wave sleep with a fairy tale

where I knock out Sleeping Beauty, fucking cock

her on the jaw. She falls into the briar.

Pussy. I find her prince. I up and sock

him, too. I call each one of them a liar.

I damn the spindle’s hundred years of sleep

because I rarely sleep. I curse the birds

who took their heads from out beneath their heap

of wings. When lovers look, they need no words.

And when a hound comes running after me,

a redbone with a smile baring its teeth

so white, I wake up with the majesty

of princesses who lie there underneath

a spell of something better still to come.

My eyes are blurry, my mouth dry and dumb.

I wish I’d dream a Lady Jesus exists,

insisting in the garden’s olive trees,

I, too, can come and go from this.

I’ll leave you in Gethsemane’s

xystus, the beck and call of the cock,

and falling wind that always ends

on Hush. Go on. Do it. Deny

me, Peter.

I’m a maenad shape-

shifting inside a sheltered cave.

And when the grave sky’s body-farm

of gods and gutted animals

serves me, you’ll eat me, masticate

me with your tongue. My mouth, a bit

of gristle.

When I asked for grace

the dust hid all the stars, and not

a single thing happened. But now

I am the dust. The rivers choke

on my fine silt. The loess is

my body. All the fertile air

the firmament of my thick skin.

And then the Holy Spirit finds its voice.