Teahouse of the Almighty (8 page)

the fur do fly, all gush and kaboom on the wind.

III.

Don't hate me because I am multiple, hurtling.

As long as there is still skin on the pad of my finger,

as long as I'm awake, as long as my (new) husband's

mouth holds out, I am the spinner, the unbridled,

the bellowing freak. When I have emptied him,

he leans back, coos, edges me along, keeps wondering

count. He falls to his knees in front of it, marvels

at my yelps and carousing spine, stares unflinching

as I bleed spittle onto the pillows.

He has married a witness.

My body bucks, slave to its selfish engine,

and love is the dim miracle of these little deaths,

fracturing, speeding for the surface.

IV.

We know the record. As it taunts us, we have giggled,

considered stopwatches, little laboratories. Somewhere

beneath the suffering clean, swathed in eyes and silver,

she came 134 times in one hour. I imagine wires holding

her tight, her throat a rattling window. Searching scrubbed

places for her name, I find only reams of numbers. I ask

the quietest of them:

V.

Are we God?

WHAT MEN DO WITH THEIR MOUTHS

for cr avery

cue the frenzied combo of molar and spit, his tongue

touches every chroma on its way to blue. he deftly

conjures washboards and rubber, even suburban

girls lie still for the twinging, the humid reckoning.

i want to coax last night's corona from his chin, rub

my index finger along the surface of his laugh, pull

it open to check the throat's slick road, something

illegal's going on down there, the sweet keening

of ancient instruments, wonder boy opens beauteous

and words become both otherwise and everything.

DREAM DEAD DADDY WALKING

You don't have to be asleep to dream. At any time,

cue the untruths. You can believe, for instance,

that your dead father isn't dead anymore.

There is the doorbell clanging and your one-year-old

screeching
Granddaddy!,
lurching and running

to the banister to risk his life looking over,

and yes, there is a curving staircase, partially awash

in sun, and your father skipping stairs,

grinning gold tooth, growling
Hey Meathead

to his yelping grandson. Your unslept story freezes

right here, with his bony brown face upturned,

you and your leaping baby looking down at him.

The clock locks on this.

The raucous welcome stops, he does not take

another step, nothing moves but his face,

slipping out of sun into dead again. I am alone

in my office, terrified of conjuring him,

but there is the clanging, the boy screeching,

the gold tooth, those slats of June, the son,

the father, the daughter seeing all of what has

already happened happening,

and the soft remembered thud of wingtips.

WRITING EXERCISE BREATHING OUTSIDE MY BINDER

I'm as trapped as a housefly

in a vagrant's unwashed beard.

Yesterday's stinging snapshots:

fatty salted meat grilling madly,

a dying bulb sputtering heat and speckles of light,

Mama's keloid-scarred cheek suffering pink foundation.

To balance that then with this now,

I gulp potent cocktails

of fluoxetine and chardonnay, and confess

that I am partial to crying jags

and this thing James Taylor coos:

Here comes another gray morning,

a not so good morning after all. . . .

I itch that scratch

before the refrain of the real

fades and forces me back

to my $50-a-week white woman.

Our current topic:

I collapse beneath touches.

What rises me is the relentless

march of seconds, guffawing weirdly,

all dressed in their heaven-bound church hats

and ripped little gowns.

THE THRILL IS ON

Inspired by the B.B. King/Eric Clapton video “Riding with the King”

Side touching side, they lean one into the other,

hugging guitars tighter than a wise man holds

onto a wandering gal, which is tight as he can clutch

without actually chaining her to the slippery surface

of his heart. The Lord promised to age B.B. the way all

bluesmen age, decorating him with a sweet snag

in his hip, a solo lecherous eye, and an abundance

of tales peppered and fueled by 'ssissippi sun and just

one more fried something—
I know, I know, it ain't no

good for me, but hell, I'm from down South, and down

there grease is a damn food group.
For so long, he was

grand marshal for the calling of the catfish. Now history

threatens to overwhelm, pulling him to earth with pills

and needles, diluting the crimson kick in his blood.

I didn't want to see the hasty Afro grow silvery sparse,

didn't need his sugar sickness unwrapped on prime time,

certainly didn't ever want to hear the blue grunt falter

as if, rehashing his woe, he had inhaled a pocket of air.

Once, in a cluttered Newport trailer, B.B. leaned forward,

touched a hammy hand to my forehead, insisted I was

hiding a piece of some angel. The voltage left his chapped

palm, sliced through like hooch, and settled restlessly

in the south of me. They cast the most remarkable spells,

these blue fathers. See how the guitar connects directly

to the belly. They dazzle with sharkskin and gold incisor,

work roots and moaning conjures, teach Northern children

the waning language of screen doors and spent matches.

Rotund on 2/4 time, impossibly sexy with all that misery

in him, B.B. laughs with his mouth wide open, serves up

a glimpse of old glitter, the odd pork sliver. The two of them

climb growl-first into that Caddy to cruise streets saddled

with old Negro names, streets where loose women beckon,

brothers check out the rims and storefronts spit glass teeth.

B.B. fills that backseat again and again in a circular tuxedo,

pearl buttons popping, bow tie lost forever under all that neck.

Craving my blue daddy, I scramble into that car, grab hold.

Clapton, looking like everybody's picture of Jesus, floors it,

hurtling three old fools toward a common key, an enviable end.

BLUES THROUGH 2 BONE

Her daddy was ashed grooved hands,

tree trunk man, rock in the
A.M.E.

and haul a righteous hymn all the way

up from his skinned toes home.

His shrine at the kitchen table,

dousing Mama's overwhupped

starches with Tabasco fire,

gotta make it worth the biting,

peppered heat stinkin' an inch

from all of his skin. Baby girl

he'd whisper, baby girl baby girl

baby girl, splintered palm pressed

into her belly, kicking hard denims

away from his ankles, losing

his thumbs in her hair, clawing loose

Sunday plaits, saying with muscle clench

and crunchy candy that she was

wide shoulder pretty, sweet leg

double dutch jumping pretty,

more color than was ever even necessary.

Underneath a pissed blanket, she waited

for teacher. She loved the rough universe

of his left hand, and how he said she was so black

he needed directions to get to her

in the dark.

FIREMAN

Some days he'd slowly spin his dizzying

street corner arc, a circle he swore

was defined by angels.
And they is black

ones, too!
he'd declare, never daring

beyond heavenly prescribed boundary.

Fireman wrecked Otis Redding lyric,

spewed misaligned gospel, regaled us

with his tales of recent visits to a hell

that was preparing to receive us all.

Sizzling Chi days, he'd whirl furious,

shower the one or two feet beyond

himself with stinging spittle, preach

and pontificate through the blur. After

sudden stops, he'd lean against the bus

shelter to undizzy.
Lawd ham mercy,
he'd

moan, while the world turned upside

in and Mama and I cut a road around him.

Long time before, Fireman had raced

face-first into a blaze trying to save

something belonged to him, a dog

or a woman or some other piece of life,

and an explosion had blown his face

straight back, you know, sometimes

I hate words, they don't know how

to say anything, imagine that I am digging

my fingers deep into the clay of my face

and pulling, watch how my eyes get,

how they can't stop seeing the last thing

they saw, his eyelashes gone, eyebrows

gone, everything on his head headed

backwards, like it was trying to get

away from him. Maps all over his skin,

maps for little lost people, everybody

this way, back, his nose smashed flat

and headed back, back, smoke-dimmed

teeth tiny tiles in his mouth, can't pull

bulbous pink lips together because

of skin fused to skin, no end to that stiff

horrible smile. In my dream, I rest the full

of my hand against his fuming torso,

daring it a place there, chanting ice.

Not knowing this sudden love, Fireman bolts

and resumes his dance, whirling, waiting,

charred limbs outstretched. From his

monstrous mouth, wrong Otis strains

to be louder than that November day,

that bone heat, those shattering windows.

PSYCHE!

“Piscataway, NJ (AP)—Researchers at Rutgers University have developed a trio of drugs they believe can destroy
HIV
.”

      
—
Dec. 12 in
New York Newsday,
the
Toronto Globe and Mail
and hundreds of newspapers around the world

“Rutgers researchers say new drug stops
HIV
in its tracks.”

      
—Washington Blade,
Dec.
17

“New class of
AIDS
drugs ‘could be it.'”

      
—New Orleans Times-Picayune,
Dec. 18

“Press stories in mid Dec. 2004 about an
AIDS
breakthrough from Rutgers University and elsewhere were exaggerated in the media.”

      
—
AIDS
Treatment News

many more than that many,

this hallelujah, this bruise Jesus

all over purpled ankle, more than

this scrubbed silver and next needle

this whole heart in an african hand

much more than these drum digits

this possible this wait a minute what

does this say this
page 47
, more than

this mad, this unlatched, this bandage