Neon Vernacular. Yusef Komunyakaa

me to Django’s gypsy guitar

      & Dunbar’s “broken tongue,” beyond

      god-headed jive of the apocalypse,

      & back to the old sorrow songs

      where boisterous flowers still nod on their

      half-broken stems. The deep rosewood

      of the piano says, “Holler

      if it feels good.” Perfect tension.

      The mainspring of notes & extended

      possibility—what falls on either side

      of a word—the beat between & underneath.

      Organic, cellular space. Each riff & word

      a part of the whole. A groove. New changes

      created. “In the Land of Obladee”

      burns out the bell with flatted fifths,

      a matrix of blood & language

      improvised on a bebop heart

      that could stop any moment

      on a dime, before going back

      to Hughes at the Five Spot.

      Twelve bars. Coltrane leafs through

      the voluminous air for some note

      to save us from ourselves.

      The limbo & bridge of a solo …

      trying to get beyond the tragedy

      of always knowing what the right hand

      will do … ready to let life play me

      like Candido’s drum.

Work

      I won’t look at her.

      My body’s been one

      Solid motion from sunrise,

      Leaning into the lawnmower’s

      Roar through pine needles

      & crabgrass. Tiger-colored

      Bumblebees nudge pale blossoms

      Till they sway like silent bells

      Calling. But I won’t look.

      Her husband’s outside Oxford,

      Mississippi, bidding on miles

      Of timber. I wonder if he’s buying

      Faulkner’s ghost, if he might run

      Into Colonel Sartoris

      Along some dusty road.

      Their teenage daughter & son sped off

      An hour ago in a red Corvette

      For the tennis courts,

      & the cook, Roberta,

      Only works a half day

      Saturdays. This antebellum house

      Looms behind oak & pine

      Like a secret, as quail

      Flash through branches.

      I won’t look at her. Nude

      On a hammock among elephant ears

      & ferns, a pitcher of lemonade

      Sweating like our skin.

      Afternoon burns on the pool

      Till everything’s blue,

      Till I hear Johnny Mathis

      Beside her like a whisper.

      I work all the quick hooks

      Of light, the same unbroken

      Rhythm my father taught me

      Years ago: Always give

      A man a good day’s labor.

      I won’t look. The engine

      Pulls me like a dare.

      Scent of honeysuckle

      Sings black sap through mystery,

      Taboo, law, creed, what kills

      A fire that is its own heart

      Burning open the mouth.

      But I won’t look

      At the insinuation of buds

      Tipped with cinnabar.

      I’m here, as if I never left,

      Stopped in this garden,

      Drawn to some Lotus-eater. Pollen

      Explodes, but I only smell

      Gasoline & oil on my hands,

      & can’t say why there’s this bed

      Of crushed narcissus

      As if gods wrestled here.

Praising Dark Places

      If an old board laid out in a field

      Or backyard for a week,

      I’d lift it up with a finger,

      A tip of a stick.

      Once I found a scorpion

      Crimson as a hibernating crawfish

      As if a rainbow edged underneath;

      Centipedes & unnameable

      Insects sank into loam

      With a flutter. My first lesson:

      Beauty can bite. I wanted

      To touch scarlet pincers—

      Warriors that never zapped

      Their own kind, crowded into

      A city cut off from the penalty

      Of sunlight. The whole rotting

      Determinism just an inch beneath

      The soil. Into the darkness

      Of opposites, like those racial

      Fears of the night, I am drawn again,

      To conception & birth. Roots of ivy

      & farkleberry can hold a board down

      To the ground. In this cellular dirt

      & calligraphy of excrement,

      Light is a god-headed

      Law & weapon.

A Good Memory

       1 Wild Fruit

      I came to a bounty of black lustre

      One July afternoon, & didn’t

      Call my brothers. A silence

      Coaxed me up into oak branches

      Woodpeckers had weakened.

      But they held there, braced

      By a hundred years of vines

      Strong & thick

      Enough to hang a man.

      The pulpy, sweet musk

      Exploded in my mouth

      As each indigo skin collapsed.

      Muscadines hung in clusters,

      & I forgot about jellybeans,

      Honeycomb, & chocolate kisses.

      I could almost walk on air

      The first time