yes moneys and birds settle by night in what formations on the lake
the roofs replaced leaves the hail brought down
flake in the sun and winds push and mound them into berms
there is no color in straw but fuel in nerves
my leg shakes and big planters hold trees
outside the stately houses around the water
I can make my bad teeth better and hang a little gold at your wrist
and my system-loving heart says our song will change at each new economy
who doesn’t wake glad to remain an owner?
whiteness a property of legal rights you slept through
the night in a house that stands
we are far from wars and our papers are filed with the state
we can hike up in the mountain
see the ancient pyramid above the valley of Tepoztlán honored a tax collector
bureaucracies precede us there’s a tribe somewhere we say
of whites trade in fear even their names such a stab at beauty
that you should assume they know our histories our books our sayings and tones
whites trade in fear
so scare them
sudden drop of the floor when I’m far from you
and too such a picking at the earth’s curved surface
and all laid on it that I am to hold a space and from it project the gaze you’ve trained in me
onto the back sides of docking bays brake places parking lots and turnabouts
and above them the sky
a bigger more respectable more competent friend
love collects at the run-off of this valley your mother says rides like a Cadillac
maybe an aesthetic theory two dogs same caramel color off-leashed
to chase and echo one another in the green patch
by the metro stop gold embossed grass threaded streets
can I be in that picture one day with you?
return to a room with sadness made crystal touches us on the thigh in a brotherly way
quickening flashes of teeth as the people in the video are about to come
or you can tell our architect what color glass for the office tower
low clouds reflected advance into their next sky next weather
let’s say our right to pleasure is a withholding
as a president lies in state do you wake in state as a medium screaming for all of us?
I carry no one in my eyes
only a path I don’t know to where you can stretch your finitude a little
I can be your thing you scream you want in your terror to bite my mouth
“right side up with care”
Henry “Box” Brown’s Mirror of Slavery panorama show interrupted
the magisterial fields the hills muscular the valleys with char with effects
black bodies used up Marina Abramović’s heroics
a magisterial emptying out I don’t trust Henry’s fields give the lie to performance
there is a tribe somewhere people say fear because it feeds them
the gull by night wheels round its technology for falling
such a handling stuns the thing is not gentle to its otherness
be thou gentle to your animal
my finest sculptors to shape a woman
Guanshiyin means observing the sounds of the world
glaze her hand and leave it loose to turn or withhold
and call it a figure for compassion
the sun comes up through the city trees
a thing wastes not want what to do with a woman’s form
whose labia are pierced and stretched her pubic hair to be burned
breasts in vices and the men who punch their own nuts
and women who press heels into scrotums on my computer
all civilians of the state trying to outpace their likenesses sell the shadow
or Henry who made the thing in which to hide
then left it on the stage