Neon Vernacular. Yusef Komunyakaa

dress

      Worn thin by a hundred washings.

      Like colors & strength

      Boiled out of cloth,

      Some deep & tall scent

      Made the daylilies cower.

      Where did the wordless

      Moans come from in twilit

      Rooms between hunger

      & panic? Those years

      We fought aside each other’s hands.

      Sap pulled a song

      From the red-throated robin,

      Drove bloodhounds mad

      At the edge of a cornfield,

      Split the bud down to hot colors.

      I began reading you Yeats

      & Dunbar, hoping for a potion

      To draw the worm out of the heart.

      Naked, unable or afraid,

      We pulled each other back

      Into our clothes.

      7 Immigrants

      Lured by the cobalt

      Stare of blast furnaces,

      They talked to the dead

      & unborn. Their demons

      & gods came with black rhinoceros powder

      In ivory boxes with secret

      Latches that opened only

      Behind unlit dreams.

      They came as Guissipie, Misako,

      & Goldberg, their muscles tuned

      To the rhythm of meathooks & washboards.

      Some wore raw silk,

      A vertigo of color

      Under sombrous coats,

      & carried weatherbeaten toys.

      They touched their hair

      & grinned into locked faces

      Of nightriders at the A & P.

      Some darker than us, we taught them

      About Colored water fountains & toilets

      Before they traded sisters

      & daughters for weak smiles

      At the fish market & icehouse.

      Gypsies among pines at nightfall

      With guitars & cheap wine,

      Sunsets orange as Django’s

      Cellophane bouquets. War

      Brides spoke a few words of English,

      The soil of distant lands

      Still under their fingernails.

      Ashes within urns. The Japanese plum

      Fruitless in our moonlight.

      Footprints & nightmares covered

      With snow, we were way stations

      Between sweatshops & heaven.

      Worry beads. Talismans.

      Passacaglia. Some followed

      Railroads into our green clouds,

      Searching for friends & sleepwalkers,

      But stayed till we were them

      & they were us, grafted in soil

      Older than Jamestown & Osceola.

      They lived in back rooms

      Of stores in The Hollow,

      Separated by alleyways

      Leading to our back doors,

      The air tasting of garlic.

      Mister Cheng pointed to a mojo

      High John the Conqueror & said

      Ginseng. Sometimes zoot-suited

      Apparitions left us talking

      Pidgin Tagalog & Spanish.

      We showed them fishing holes

      & guitar licks. Wax pompadours

      Bristled like rooster combs,

      But we couldn’t stop loving them

      Even after they sold us

      Rotting fruit & meat,

      With fingers pressed down

      On the scales. We weren’t

      Afraid of the cantor’s snow wolf

      Shadowplayed along the wall

      Embedded in shards of glass.

      Some came numbered. Geyn

      Tzum schvartzn yor. Echoes

      Drifted up the Mississippi,

      Linking us to Sacco, Vanzetti,

      & Leo Frank. Sometimes they stole

      Our Leadbelly & Bessie Smith,

      & headed for L.A. & The Bronx,

      As we watched poppies bloom

      Out of season, from a needle

      & a hundred sanguine threads.

      8 A Trailer at the Edge of a Forest

      A throng of boys whispered

      About the man & his daughters,

      How he’d take your five dollars

      At the door. With a bull terrier

      At his feet, he’d look on. Fifteen

      & sixteen, Beatrice & Lysistrata

      Were medicinal. Mirrors on the ceiling.

      Posters of a black Jesus on a cross. Owls

      & ravens could make a boy run out of his shoes.

      Country & Western filtered through wisteria.

      But I only found dead grass & tire tracks,

      As if a monolith had stood there

      A lifetime. They said the girls left quick

      As katydids flickering against windowpanes.

      9 White Port & Lemon Juice

      At fifteen I’d buy bottles

      & hide them inside a drainpipe

      Behind the school

      Before Friday-night football.

      Nothing was as much fun

      As shouldering a guard

      To the ground on the snap,

      & we could only be destroyed

      By another boy’s speed

      On the twenty-yard line.

      Up the middle on two, Joe.

       Eddie Earl, you hit that damn

       Right tackle, & don’t let those

       Cheerleaders take your eyes off

      The ball. We knew the plays

      But little about biology

      &