The Brooklyn Rail

Hymn
— in the mirror

     There’s a Valley
A man’s worked back makes
     And there’s a violence, too
There’s a River
     A man’s low Voice makes
And there’s benevolence, too
     There’s a Falcon
His fierce Attention makes
     And there’s a violence, too

There’s a way a man just
     Turns at you his Weight,
Crying, he, alone, Am the One Hurt
     And is malevolence, too
Turn Sudden color, Superior, repeating
     Scarlet, I, a Man, am hurt so that violence
Turns the spiral of a Rising
     argument: Wait! Listen
Yet his Violence chooses

     Not to hear but walk from it, so that Choice,
Some choices, Shameless, random,
     Some evasions seem a violence, too—
Men choose the violences they deliver,
     right? like mirrors choose the subjects
of their Debt? Or is it by Accident? Look in,
     & what is it you think you see?
Yourself. Your Power. Your Prejudices
     come out the throat to take,

like any Man, all the while, always
     The nearest man’s side
or his Business or his Strident
     Evidence or Damage or any Benefit
of Doubt, his Wit, his Acumen
     And, of course, tho won’t admit it,
Some that Violence, too,
                                                     like I do?

Do I create Violence, too? Or is it Violation?
     What is it when I say Yes still mean
No? I say No but mean it.
     That’s violence, too?
But no—There are degrees of Offense, hierarchies
     of Injury, declensions of Pain
Sat among Violation, Vex, and Violences, too
     But lately what I

I’m trying hard to make sense in me

     is Mad before is Meeker, less feral
yet is more femme than feasible
     and Fine yet is Upset, and not a man,
or Hardly was, so failed it sure,
     and sees no more the purpose for
the Value in the Claim.
     A man turns to you and names
Himself the Emperor of Pain,
     like it ain’t possible
His tall Hubris hurt him.
                                                     Why be a man

When there are Valleys you can be?
     Penetrate & you can glide them,
Take in their honest expanse
     As one better, second nature and see
Some shy ribbon of river move in tricky,
     patient wakes, the very
Line the Falcon takes
     Returning to the Falconer?
Why be a woman

When her flight be weary, yet—
     Is anyone Free in that
who-space contests before a Mirror,
     Choosing now to ground Eyes,
Surer, in the Self.
                                                   Cue: Peace.

     I think it means that we
can be some Other work
     than we were Raised, & Deepen;
That I can strike out Him for Hymn—
     And sing up Benevolences, too
For it’s easy enough to conquer a Man
     I look in his eyes, and grow pathetic

Passion isn’t Trauma isn’t Fury isn’t Repeated Pain

 

     Blood stood up on her face shocked once,
Not again; nevermind red be boring. Dreams, talons,

                                                         *

Not just some sutures, but dreams suffer my split head now used to
suffering red. Pain is hot, the sun, viral, so foul pain

                                                          *

Now is any random star, is all dwarf stars between us. Tho my face betrayed
none of their dark goings-on been faced, that heart

                                                         *

(Beat face, by Strangers beaten again & again)
is scarred; survived. Baby, it throws me

                                                         *

     left, & something hard. Am so throwed —
How once you come that far to know the growl beaky pain, you you know.

          —for not only Brianna Ghey, in memoriam

Creole Love Song (Or, Down Under the Bridge)

             When you had gone the love came.
                          — Emily Dickinson

My boyfriend’s anger come out in Dashed couplets.
     I’m a beast / I’m a beast, he raps, I’m a tall

     All
nigga. And I let him. Yeahhh / Straight, racial nigga.

     Yeahhh, he repeats, Straight, Creepin’ nigga.
My boyfriend’s anger trot out in Hellish triplets,
     And I would Kiss him

     Except not to stop his Cardiac Passion.
Won out in the strangest designations of his dark Soca
     skin O do I Love to Love it glisten, Love him,
Love being what he’s owed, & me, his Passion got Up

in me as gaseous, delicious Heat, a star.
     Are we are two Fetishes to the other? I hate
To think it. Dark-meridian, I have called him. Light,
     He calls me and something else. American Negro, once called us both.
And will we let it Sound again? But let me listen Not
     to absent his urgent song.

Let my boyfriend’s anger come out in sleepy quartrain,
     Tho is it my anger ever to explain?
No, but that I traffick in it still. Except I am already my own
     Proven boyfriend, my own family, own Shadow.

     This is the story of a Mad girl wandering to belong.
Since nobody trusts a Tranny in this whole wide world,
     of course I have no boyfriend
Who is nothing but his rancor he has no Pride
     Left. No world

     Left. A man takes a woman, makes her his wife.
To take me me, he has no self-respect left,
     Says the world. So my boyfriend’s anger come out
In this shaky quintet, & loud.
     Now I sit So next to me I forget myself,

So much in a tent revival of my keen, derivative sadness,
     A clear, returning Love. Except wouldn’t him choose me broad
Daylight, if there were no fear? not someone near? Dont’t fuck
     with me, baby, Love said, Baby, Ima come up. Him said,

Don’t fuck with me, baby. Let a nigga come up.
     And O! let it come true. Uh, huh. I would let me lean
On the Strength of him; baby, lean on the strength
     Of me. Uh, huh. And let us cling another,
Clung as the color Black is his song

     Since everyone ignores a Faggot I became a Lonely girl so now
Will you Love me?