Cross Country

When I ran, it rained niggers. Early in October—

the first creases of autumn, a flag-weary sky

in which yellow birds, in flight, slip through the breast-

bone of God and tear at the coarse threads

that keep the morning knit tightly around his heart.

What was it that they sang about the light, their tongues,

the thistles they pluck from the bitter bark

of an allthorn then thrust into the breast of whatever god

or good animal requires eating, a good piercing?

These blond bodies thrashing about above me

were death’s idea of the morning passing. Here,

below this golden altar, the making and unmaking

of my body. The kettle-clank and souring sumac

of a man yelling at the light slipping in and out

of my mouth. What name must I carry above the dust

of this field? Bruised ear, blank body, purple tongue, bloody

God bleeding do you hear me? Deer piss and poison ivy

made pungent by the dew and morning sun rising, do you hear me?

When I ran, it rained niggers. In a ditch along the road,

a pair of wild boars, slain and laid tusk to tail, point,

as if required, in two directions at once, toward my body

pressing the last bits of a hunter’s moon into the tar

of this road and away from the meadow-red light coming

up through the chaff rising above this hectored field

and the man yelling. Nigger in the cicadas tuning up

to tear the morning into tatters. Nigger in the squawk

and clatter of a hen complaining of a hand reaching

below her bottom and removing the warm work

of a cold night. Nigger in the reeds covering

the muck of a beaver’s hard birth. Nigger in the blue

hour of a field once wet with the breath of a lone horse

cracking along its flanks. Nigger in the fog lifting

from this field and the stillbirth it reveals. Nigger

in the running. In the bog at the end of this road.

In the war and in between the wars. Nigger

in the pink salt and eyelashes of a woman I love.

Her mouth pulling water from behind my knee.

Pulling, pulling, pulling. Think: nigger is the god

of our brief salvation. Nigger in a body falling toward a horizon.

Nigger in the twilight that is no longer a twilight

but a black creek fumbling along the spine of a boy

who is running through a city that is running out of water.

Even the lions have left for the mountains.

This is America speaking in translation, in glitter,

in gold grills and fried chicken. Auto-tune this if you must.

Cher will be singing in the brush of static from the attic

radio, believing in love after love or life after love

despite the impure thoughts of evening, despite

the rain soaking the red head of a red bird

now dead in a puddle that refuses to reflect the moon.