Song of the Andoumboulou: 181

Nathaniel Mackey

Once again we sat in a taqueria watch-

ing soccer. “Heads were coming off

daily,” Ahdja found herself saying, “when

Lay-

la heard her Majnoun sing.” Brother B

had been wondering out loud about the

perch he looked out from, inwardly what

to

make of the meaty lips her mouth prof-

fered, sweet-meat inducement to what

he sat wondering, meaty lips it maybe

only seemed her mouth proffered, death

ever

the backdrop she might or might not

have been saying, lost heads meant so

much else… Sweet meat’s tarjuman the

perch

made him, many a lost head’s interpre-

ter, would-be tarjuman, he made it seem she

made it seem to say. “The world’s on fire,”

she

came out and said, “the ice cap’s melt-

ing. You hang on every twitch of my mouth,

you dote and you ogle. Perch or no perch,

you

make me blush.” Brother B’s head rolled

or might as well have rolled as the rest of

us watched, tarjuman of aught but embar-

rassment, he too made to blush, nothing if not

Ah-

dja’s toy, his head a soccer ball of sorts…

It seemed we heard a high keening sound. Ah-

dja’s rebuke went on echoing, arctic water

beat

on the taqueria door. Planetary gas trap,

planetary sweat, world at risk, Ahdja’s alarm

si-

rening

yet

•

Eighty-fourth minute, still no score, we

chewed our tacos. News of a new bomb-

ing interrupted the match, we kept eating.

World

in our faces world at bay as we wrapped

up our food stop, soon to be gone again…

In my thoughts a broken voice that no

long-

er signified serenaded us, notes learned

by rote from day one. My mind drifted

back to Low Forest. Deer stood like

sta-

tues beside the road… Drizzle native

to North Lone Coast came down, mist

heard as missed riffed on as mystic, yth-

mic dismay. Ahdja braced for loss I could

see.

She mourned abandonment long before-

hand I could see. Her bones glowed under

her skin… Ahdja’s mouth glued on Brother

B’s

face, adjunct prophecy, his pasted on hers

I could see. Hers was a game of playing his

I could see, his playing hers I saw. All I saw

was

alarm lit them

up

•

(chant)

Brother B looked in on the world, all

aspect interdicted under threat of

house arrest, comeliness whose midriff

drew

him in. Ahdja’s blank body absorbing

his own blank body, late lady of the chur-

chical girth no arms could get around,

all

its amnesiac allure… Not bounty but

a beyond beyond bounty, bodily won-

der, broad unembraceable thought’s mor-

phic thrum, thought-song’s day begun.

He

dreamt her wide, he dreamt her flat the

way the world once was, conferred

with by crows blown off their perch the

same

as he’d be from his, theirs the rings a-

round Saturn… Implicate girth he got

next to in dreams, an implied surrogacy,

so-

nority’s reconnoiter, sonority’s recondite

compass, funk too strong a word for it,

so-

nority’s hermetic

whiff

____________

(invoice)

Ahdja and Brother B stared off into

space, looked out the taqueria’s wall

that was all window, the alarmed

lovers

or the would-be lovers they were

notwithstanding, alarmed or in love all

the more. Some unlikely regard’s

white

fire they were not to tell they all

the same dwelt on, bodily welter’s wry

dissolve, some essential sadness…

Caught up in spirit we called it, biting

into

our quesadillas looking on, his and her

blank bodies a screen for the world

outside, a masque if they could, a ritual, a

rite

they’d remake it

with

•

(chorus)

Brother B blushed and missed a beat

but said in reply, “Not since his and

her turned heads fell off have they

stopped

rolling.” It was polis compounded

of eros again. “Why,” he topped it

off, “think not?” It was eros construed

as polis, again our eternal wont… We

felt

sorry for them, we felt sorry for our-

selves, burnt-out buildings tattooed on

their skin, skin like it was newsprint,

world

so with them they shrank, Andoum-

boulou again, refugee dead on their skin…

If not shadow play shamanic dance. His

and

her platonic exchange. Black Ellie leaned

and whispered in my ear, “I wanted

wontons,” a fight that might’ve broken

out

suppressed… If not shadow play cha-

rade of the dead, tarjuman of tally, toll.

Itamar paid B and Ahdja no mind, alarm

no mind, lost to the savor of asada dashed

with

lime, spark’s or spat’s ignition no mind…

We were taking our time, the screen had

gone back to the match, no score yet, Broth-

er B and Ahdja’s exchange by the wayside,

ver-

bal tick’s verge on skirmish done. The tri-

butes to the dead posted on their skin

made them shiver. If not shadow play the

tim-

bre of lust I was thinking. Huff mock-

sang, semisang, as everyone laughed, “I’m

in love with a dicty woman, I just can’t

keep from crying”… If not shadow play the

sway

of the floor I was thinking, the table’s way

with gravity as well. I was thinking no

Dogon made the Middle Passage but here

they were, I was thinking all sorts of things. I

was

thinking the at-some-point-to-be-abandoned

girl heard the song of herself, if not shadow

play the way she’d always heard love would

find.

If not shadow play a run of suns I thought…

No Dogon swam the Atlantic or crossed the

Rockies but here they were at Taqueria Vallar-

ta, we the migrating they all over again, each

in

our awkwardness desirous even more, salsa

spilled on our soccer shorts, chorus, carousel,

crew… Caroling, carousing, chorusing, heads

com-

ing off, Ahdja pointed out again, when Layla

heard Majnoun sing. Black Ellie mock-sang

seconding it, all of us on our way out the door

as if out of a tej bar, bellies full but wondering

what

did we see, why did we

stop

____________

Once out the door we walked in a ring.

Chorus. Crew. Carousel. Planetary gas

up and gone but not gone. Another bomb

gone

off somewhere no matter what… What had

it all been getting at we wanted to ask,

too caught up to ask. Mummers we might

well

have been, love with its way of moving on

and we in its wake, all that might accrue to

it a more viable body, a footnote or a perch

note,

Brother B’s

reset