Pleasure Dome. Yusef Komunyakaa

the next city

      of rooms filled with California

      Spiritual Sunshine incense

      I go, a sleepwalker

      on a cliff.

Sunbather

      She lies under July, a blue towel

      across her buttocks, her bare back

      new metal arched in a dark room.

      A sycamore guards her. Three crows

      in symmetrical branches

      watch their feathers fall,

      black leaves. Today is

      an 8″ ×10″ platinum photograph

      in an old man’s dresser drawer.

      The sky’s a slow fire,

      car lights over night ice.

      I close my eyes, concentrate,

      & try to remove the blue towel

      till the sun goes out.

Apprenticeship

      His fingernails are black

      & torn from blows,

      as if the hammer

      declares its own angle of reference.

      The young carpenter curses:

      “Awww, fuck! Sonovabitch! Dumb shit!”

      His girlfriend lowers her white dress,

      then moves away.

      She reappears nude,

      props one foot upon a red chair,

      looks him square in the eyes.

      Her skin glistens like a woman

      who’s made love all afternoon.

      Twenty-two stories up, he steps out

      over the beams like a man with wings.

Light on the Subject

      Hello, Mister Jack,

      make yourself at home.

      Here in Deadwood City

      our eyes flash back to

      knives on silver whetstones.

      Can I get you anything,

      perhaps a shot of Four Roses?

      In this gray station of wood

      our hearts are wet rags

      & we turn to ourselves,

      holding our own hands

      as the scaffolds sway.

      I can tell you this much

      Brother Justice, our faith’s

      unshakable, even if we rock stones

      asleep in broken arms.

      Because we have a thing

      about law & order,

      we’ve all seen moonlight on lakes

      & crows whittled from a block

      of air. In this animal-night, no

      siree, we won’t disappoint you

      when we rise out of hawkweed.

Punchdrunk

      So what if he walks into red

      North Carolina traffic at night

      like Jarrell, dreaming hollyhock,

      blowing some horn of bone?

      Hellbent for green dark

      because a man’s mind runs

      away from him like a wild horse.

      The second thought of a wood thrush,

      wings waxed to August sky. Deep relic

      truths & strange tales. Once he

      went ringing doorbells, singing

       Sticks & stones may break my bones, but. …

      If he knows nothing else, he knows

      how to take a solid, left, black jab,

      how to force a big man to kiss the canvas,

      a life stronger than fossil & boxwood.

Vigilante

      Each hired hand places

      a dusty boot in a stirrup,

      swings himself into a sweat-burnt

      saddle, hoping to handle

      a noose. The boss’s moneysack

      & Willie D. Jones gone.

      Far as the eye can see

      a sparrow, conifers jut toward

      enamel sky. Snagged cloth

      leads a trail into hackberry.

      Near the northridge

      he crossed the river into

      another country of nights.

      A human form scuffles knee-deep

      in this year’s first snow,

      bobbing on the sights of five guns.

Nothing to Do with Janice Drake

      Mister Humbug

      returns. She runs

      to him, wailing his name

      as if her clothes were on fire.

      Then she sweeps

      this killer’s tracks

      clean, removing fingerprints

      from the murder weapon.

      He looks at her

      & says, “Let that dress fall, Sweetie.

      Don’t tell me

      dogwoods grow crooked

      because of Jesus.”

      He grins

      like a new case-knife.

      Then stands at the bedroom

      window, & says:

      “Don’t you know

      one of these days

      you gonna make me

      blow your brains out?”

Reconstructing a Crime

      The back door opened

      quiet as a coffin lid.

      From the yard a Douglas fir

      stared over his shoulder

      like some god.

      He was shoeless,

      a man tiptoeing upon a dream.

      From the right angle, the way

      the moon now falls through damask curtains,

      if anything, you’d only seen

      the gun.

      Outside their bedroom door

      he could hear blossoms

      of