Neon Vernacular. Yusef Komunyakaa

      

      YUSEF

      KOMUNYAKAA

      NEW AND

      SELECTED POEMS

      Wesleyan University Press / Middletown, Connecticut

      Published by Wesleyan University Press

      Middletown, CT 06459

      www.wesleyan.edu/wespress

      Copyright © 1993 by Yusef Komunyakaa

      All rights reserved

      Printed in the United States of America

      15 14 13 12 11 10

      CIP data appear at the end of the book

      Originally produced in 1993 by

      Wesleyan/University Press of New England

      Hanover, NH 03755

      The “New Poems” appeared in the following

      magazines: Callaloo, Indiana Arts, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, The Louisville Review, Mid-American Review, Ploughshares, Red Dirt,River Styx, and The Southern Review.

      Dedications & Other Darkhorses, Rocky Mountain Creative Arts Journal, 1977; included by permission. Lost in the Bonewheel Factory, Lynx House Press, 1979; included by permission. Copacetic, Wesleyan University Press, 1984; included by permission. Toys in a Field, Black River Press, 1986; included by permission. I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head, Wesleyan University Press, 1986; included by permission. Dien Cai Dau, Wesleyan University Press, 1988; included by permission. February in Sydney, Matchbooks, 1989; included by permission.

      Front cover illustration, Uptown Looking Downtown, by Romare Bearden. Estate of Romare Bearden, courtesy of ACA Galleries, New York, NY.

       In memory of my grandmother, Mary,and my father, J. W.

       Contents

       New Poems

       Fog Galleon 3

       At the Screen Door 4

       Moonshine 5

       Salt 6

       Changes; or, Reveries at a Window Overlooking a Country Road, with Two Women Talking Blues in the Kitchen 8

       Work 11

       Praising Dark Places 13

       A Good Memory 14

       Birds on a Powerline 23

       Fever 24

       Little Man Around the House 27

       Songs for My Father 28

       from Dedications & Other Darkhorses

       The Tongue Is 37

       Chair Gallows 38

       Translating Footsteps 39

       from Lost in the Bonewheel Factory

       Looking a Mad Dog Dead in the Eyes 43

       1938 44

       Stepfather: A Girl’s Song 45

       Apprenticeship 46

       Light on the Subject 47

       Beg Song 48

       Passions 49

       The Dog Act 51

       For You, Sweetheart, I’ll Sell Plutonium Reactors 52

       The Nazi Doll 53

       Corrigenda 54

       from Copacetic

       False Leads 57

       Soliloquy: Man Talking to a Mirror 58

       The Way the Cards Fall 59

       Annabelle 60

       Faith Healer 61

       More Girl Than Boy 62

       April Fools’ Day 63

       Untitled Blues 64

       Back Then 65

       Blasphemy 66

       Safe Subjects 67

       Black String of Days 69

       Villon / Leadbelly 70

       Elegy for Thelonious 71

       Copacetic Mingus 72

       Letter to Bob Kaufman 73

       Woman, I Got the Blues 74

       Newport Beach, 1979 75

       Gloria’s Clues 76

       Charmed 77

       The Cage Walker 78

       Addendum 79

       Epilogue to the Opera of Dead on Arrival 80

       Blues Chant Hoodoo Revival 81

       from I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head

       Unnatural State of the Unicorn 87

       Touch-up Man 88

       How I See Things 89

       The Thorn Merchant 90

       The Thorn Merchant’s Right-Hand Man 91

       The Heart’s Graveyard Shift 92

       Boy Wearing a Dead Man’s Clothes 94

       The Music That Hurts 96

       When in Rome—Apologia 97

       The Thorn Merchant’s Wife 99

       The Thorn Merchant’s Mistress 100

       After Summer Fell Apart 102

       The Brain to the Heart 104

       Audacity of the Lower Gods