Before The Wedding

That man you’re standing next to…For so long
I looked up to him like a god. You’re immured in conversation
And when he smiles back at you now, my heart
Skips, and not for him.

Tonight I need armor to look at you; when I want
To tell you how we should be together, no human
Language comes out. I have known this feeling
That warms, then scalds, me ...

For he was a great man thrown & pulled toward the flames
For the flames were familiar for they would seal his story
For he was taken down face down body down to account
For his soul stood up & noticed the chariot song descending
For he pleaded as the fiery metals coiled upon his ebony skin
For he was our Renaissance our thirst our vessel for Freedom
For they said he was our father our son our symbol our body
For a choir assembled in the streets in every furnace of witness
For he called upon his mother as he called upon the Source
For he was not your Negro he was not your Black cut down
For he was the ancestral ship burning through waves & chains
For he was the future no one had prophesied the Now & the Is...

Blue Hill
The simplest way
to conquer Blue Hill
in the heat of the day
is to drive and stop
at the very foot
of the gentlest slope
and this we did
but were lost at once
in the bristling shade ...

With the mast up
while wheeling the boat
out from the yard,
by the sandy shore
to launch as if for
the first time, sun
bright, sky light, wind
half brisk, a new ...

I want to be inside
the wooden ribcage

of a god. I want
to fold my clothes

in a small room
with a red velvet curtain ...

Like the car-heavy bison on the ruined road
in Chernobyl’s exclusion zone, she keeps her home
here. A raven stretches its wings atop a crucifix in spring
as Maria farms her atomic land. Armored bugs threaten
her crops. Why must they interrupt? She two-steps ...