::: after reggie eldridge

Imagine a cathedral of bones,
her hesitation a chorus of brass, imagine

light bending through the mosaic
of her smile, imagine mornings

kneeling in her knotted curls, rocking
religious on the pews of her thighs.

Imagine salvation, a single finger
forgiving your eyebrow for every

dishonest twitch or frivolous furrow,
sing the cobwebbed hymn of her

beauty, silly scattered marbles
in the water at the altar, call

her cosmos, call her christmas
loose teeth and fractured breath

Let her be sand through your knuckles,
grit under nails, the pollen your shirt wears

home. She is the perfect language,
with no poem to call

her own.

I’m chasing chariots.
Spitting out the cherry stems
and tracking postcards with my heartbeat.
When I was seven I wrote
something ugly in crayon
letters green and hunching and angry
and I meant it but I’m still alive and
somehow I’m always still alive even
when trees collapse and Fords bend themselves
into concrete and fingernails dig through bone
to open an aorta, somehow I twinkle and
hum into another morning, another morning
dusted from the heels of gold leather pumps.
Why do I bruise so easy? Car doors and granite.
This morning I am hungry and honest
I don’t know how else to say I miss you

The lizards unravel their tails poolside
to listen to poets’ tales, thirty years ago
these stories did not exist, a black girl
ate a pickle somewhere and our fathers
cooled our mothers’ breasts with ice.
We write suras on the dried femurs
of griffins, tangle in each other’s
poolfrizzed hair, and sing covers
of ballads that once crackled on car radios, this
is where mermaids come to swim, where
warlocks sharpen scimitars, and orpheus
hatches in the throats of black boys
who maybe keep a guitar in a soft case
back home, home wherever home is, this
is the only home many will ever know, no
rain eroding ceiling paint or memo pads
just iambs and assonance and love affairs
that pull apart like thick smiles of grapefruit.
We love the sting of citrus in our nail beds,
we tolerate tobasco in our eyes. We regal
fools. Our tongues beat sore on polished words,
truths we only wish that we rehearsed.

A dragonfly collides with the glass door
to the pool, his wings strum the strands
of my hair like a cello. I am lilting
like a coal cooling under breeze, spurting
sparks into the song-strung air like seeds.
When I am this unapologetically beautiful
I sometimes grow sullen, aware
of my awareness of slope and tint and
skin that makes no difference at all
when I only want to be the perfect idea
of myself. Last night I told the man I love
that one day soon I would begin to fly;
with eyes full open like peeled plums,
with arms cavalierly limp from the sockets,
wind would fill my marrow with the truth
that I am perfect and I believe myself
enough to lift into the cistern of the sky.

So, I aimed to arrive at Midway at 5:45am for my 7am flight, but hit the snooze on the cell phone one too many times. What made me think that 6am traffic would somehow be lighter? At 6:57am I was still barefoot in the security line, almost on the verge of tears when the gruff TSA lady said she would need to run my purse through the x-ray a SECOND time, and then search it by hand for “additional screening.” I got on my 7am flight at 7:09, but alas, I got on the plane. Amen. I’ve already run into a number of poets from across the country making their annual pilgrimage to the National Poetry Slam. My connecting flight to West Palm Beach is about to start boarding. May this begin another life-changing week in the magical life of an artist.