Wednesday, January 15, 2014
When I’m doing it right, this life
is sweeter and more lethal
than I could ever have imagined.
It's good to know how to be hated
and keep dancing. How to listen
when the dogs stop barking. I don't know
how you could trust anyone who's never
been lost inside their own body, their own
hands becoming buckets, the kind kittens
and toddlers drown in if you look away
for even a minute. But I don't know you.
Everything you say sounds like
candy wrappers opened in an otherwise
silent theater. A cough at the opera
on repeat, so I can't hear the aria
Marian Anderson is singing through the fire.
I’ve never been on fire, and I doubt
you have either, but I know
a thing or two about smoke
in the rearview, a thing or eight
about walking through a neighborhood
where nobody sings like me
or they want the song under my coat so bad
they stick the moon in their throats
and call down the streetlights, call out
the names they learned from their fathers for love's
facsimiles and expect no answer but are still enraged
at the silence, at my fast clasped coat. Marian
Anderson knew notes that could make dogs
and angels halt on the sidewalk but the Daughters
of the American Revolution saw only
the fire. Saw only the possibility of drowning
if they opened their hands. What scares you
now? How do you dream through all the howling?
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
